NEW YORK — Donald Sutherland, the Canadian actor whose wry, arrestingly off-kilter screen presence spanned more than a half-century of films from “M-A-S-H” to “The Hunger Games,” died Thursday in Miami. He was 88.

Sutherland died after a long illness, according to a statement from Creative Artists Agency, which represented him.

Kiefer Sutherland said on the social media platform X he believed his father was one of the most important actors in the history of film: “Never daunted by a role, good, bad or ugly. He loved what he did and did what he loved, and one can never ask for more than that.”

The tall and gaunt Sutherland, who flashed a grin that could be sweet or diabolical, was known for offbeat characters like Hawkeye Pierce in Robert Altman’s “M-A-S-H,” the hippie tank commander in “Kelly’s Heroes” and the stoned professor in “Animal House.”

Before transitioning into a long career as a respected character actor, Sutherland epitomized the unpredictable, anti-establishment cinema of the 1970s. He never stopped working, ultimately appearing in nearly 200 films and series.

Over the decades, Sutherland showed his range in more buttoned-down — but still eccentric — roles in Robert Redford’s “Ordinary People” and Oliver Stone’s “JFK.” More, recently, he starred in the “Hunger Games” films. A memoir, “Made up, but Still True,” is due out in November.

Born July 17, 1935, in St. John, New Brunswick, Donald McNichol Sutherland was the son of a salesman and a math teacher. Raised in Nova Scotia, he was a disc jockey with his own radio station at age 14.

While studying at the University of Toronto, he met Lois Hardwick, an aspiring actor. They married in 1959 but divorced seven years later.

After graduating in 1956, Sutherland attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art to study acting. He began appearing in West End plays and British television. After a move to Los Angeles, a trio of war films changed his trajectory.

His breakthrough was “The Dirty Dozen” (1967), in which he played Vernon Pinkley, the officer-impersonating psychopath. The year 1970 saw the release of both the World War II yarn “Kelly’s Heroes” and “M-A-S-H,” a smash hit that catapulted Sutherland to stardom.

His career as a leading man peaked in the 1970s, when he starred in films by the era’s top directors — even if they didn’t always do their best work with him. Sutherland, who frequently said he considered himself at the service of a director’s vision, worked with Federico Fellini (1976’s “Fellini’s Casanova”), Bernardo Bertolucci (1976’s “1900”), Claude Chabrol (1978’s “Blood Relatives”) and John Schlesinger (1975’s “The Day of the Locust”).

One of his finest performances came as a detective in Alan Pakula’s “Klute” (1971). It was during filming that he met Jane Fonda, with whom he had a three-year relationship that began at the end of his second marriage to actor Shirley Douglas. He and Douglas divorced in 1971 after having twins: Rachel and Kiefer, named after Warren Kiefer, the writer of his first film, “Castle of the Living Dead.”

In 1974, the actor began living with actor Francine Racette, with whom he remained ever after. They had three children: Roeg, born in 1974 and named after director Nicolas Roeg (“Don’t Look Now”); Rossif, born in 1978 and named after director Frederick Rossif; and Angus Redford, born in 1979 and named after Robert Redford.

“Ordinary People” (1980) was Redford’s directorial debut, starring Sutherland as the father of a family destroyed by tragedy; it won four Oscars, including best picture.

Sutherland was never nominated for an Oscar but received an honorary Oscar in 2017. He won an Emmy in 1995 for the TV film “Citizen X” and won two Golden Globes for “Citizen X” and the 2003 TV film “Path to War.”