Donald Sutherland speaks openly of a Hollywood scandal he was in the middle of in the 60s and 70s – detailing his affair with Jane Fonda.
He was back on screen for Pride and Prejudice last weekend, but it was more than 50 years ago that Sutherland was involved in a brazen affair.
It was while filming Klute in 1970 that he fell in love with co-star and activist Jane Fonda, even though both were married at the time.
They stood together at the forefront of Hollywood support for the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War.
But it was behind closed doors that the pair were just as passionate and Sutherland still dwells, often on their intimate moments together.
Fonda’s separation rumours began spreading in 1970 after she had been with husband Roger Vadim, who directed her in 1968's Barbarella, since 1963.
Sutherland always claimed it was his co-star who made all the moves on him.
At the time, he said: “We’d already been cast but had not started shooting, and one day, she made it very clear, via a somewhat provocative suggestion, that I should come home with her.
“And I just said... Ok.'"
It was those comments that marked the end of the actor's own second marriage to Shirley Douglas, which had produced twins Kiefer and Rachel.
In 2014 Kiefer revealed that they had never discussed the affair but he imagined his father would say: “'I fell in love.' I understand that. People do.
“And when they’re falling in love, they believe in everything so strongly and passionately, this kind of heightened experience, that it’s very hard to judge somebody for it,” he added.
Sutherland frequently and famously has talked about the ordeal, famously declaring: "She had, at the time, the most beautiful breasts in the world."
Apparently, what followed was a description so explicit it was not suitable for print.
He did, however, tell-all about another encounter in a later interview with GQ magazine.
He said: “I was with Jane Fonda at the Chelsea Hotel in 1970, maybe ’71. It was a room with a big bed and, to the right, four or five stairs to a landing that led to the bathroom.
“There was a little oval window on the landing and there was a streetlight shining through that window though it seemed more like moonlight so maybe it was the moon, I like to think it was the moon.
"I was lying on my back on the bed when Jane came out of the bathroom.
“She, too, was naked, and when the moonlight caught her perfect breasts I stopped breathing. Everything stopped.
“And then it started again. Now, when I see it in my memory, I stopped breathing again."
The lust quickly fell apart as quickly as it started and shortly after the encounters and Sutherland was left devastated.
He said: "We got together shortly before we made Klute and then we were together until the relationship exploded and fell apart in Tokyo. And it broke my heart.
"I was eviscerated. I was so sad. It was a wonderful relationship right up to the point we lived together."
But, in 1972, Sutherland married French Canadian actress Francine Racette, after meeting her on the set of the Canadian pioneer drama Alien Thunder.
Together, as they remain one of the longest and most stable marriages in Hollywood, they have three sons - Rossif Sutherland, Angus Redford Sutherland, and Roeg Sutherland.
