Donald Sutherland playing at politics

Sutherland wins the charm offensive as Speaker Nathan Templeton.

Donald Sutherland is telling another joke. It's a chicken joke about the former Canadian Prime Minister, Pierre Elliot Trudeau.

"He saw Joe Clark walk by and he was famous because he was walking with a chicken in Newfoundland," he says, as if noting the weather.

"He said, 'What are you doing with that turkey?' And Joe said, 'That's not a turkey. That's a chicken.' Trudeau said, 'I'm talking to the chicken."'

One hopes this is not a subtle dig at his present company. Sutherland is notoriously gruff, difficult and infamous for demanding no smoker come within a 100m radius of him on the set of recent film, Pride & Prejudice. The sheer volume of his CV is just as intimidating, with more than 100 film and TV roles, two Golden Globes and an Emmy. As Speaker of the House Nathan Templeton on the Geena Davis-helmed Commander in Chief, he plays the antagonist. But he's not really an old grump. He's a funny old grump.

"People say, 'Oh, you're so awful. But they're always grinning when they say it, so I can't be all that bad. I'm 70. I have been around for such a long time and people are really lovely to me ... they treat me like I'm a kind of failed poet."

Aside from memorable turns in (among many others), M.A.S.H, Citizen X, Casanova, The Dirty Dozen, The Italian Job and Path to War, Sutherland is famous for being Kiefer Sutherland's dad, although he is quick to point out the 24 star is one of four sons and a daughter he loves "fiercely".

"Three of them carry a significant amount of the DNA of their mother," he adds, referring to his third wife, "and that's a really wonderful thing for them."

His family were part of the reason he accepted the role in Commander in Chief. After a lifetime chasing film sets, a steady TV job would mean he could finally settle in LA.

"And I'm 70, you know, so it seemed like a good idea."

Why, because retirement is on the horizon?

"If you have a suggestion as to how I might answer that, I would be thrilled. I think the world 'death' is the operative one and that's the retirement I'm thinking of. I'm not planning on an after-life."

He once had a near-death experience, although he's not convinced it wasn't just his brain tricking him. While shooting Kelly's Heroes with Clint Eastwood in Yugoslavia in the late 60s, he contracted spinal meningitis, and fell into a coma. He saw a blue tunnel. He went outside his body.

"I was going down but I didn't want to die," he says, "so I pulled myself back. It was tempting not to go. It was so peaceful, and there was this big white light at the bottom." From his hospital bed, he could hear the doctors dictating a telegram to his wife to tell them not to bother flying over, that they would send the body.

These days he takes his health seriously. He gets up at 3.30am, three times a week to make it to his Pilates class by 4.30. The main problem with this, he spits, is that he counteracts the good he does by eating two breakfasts.

"I said to my wife the other day, 'Do I look tired?' And she said, 'No. You look fat."'

This is not true either, although he is slightly more cherubic than he appears on screen in Commander in Chief.

He is also impossibly likeable in a role that, played by a less experienced actor, could have come across as smarmy. The relationship between Templeton and Davis' Mackenzie Allen is unusual, to say the least. Templeton, a Republican, wasn't even interested in running for President until he was faced with a female Independent as competition. The pair of them constantly spar, manipulate and publicly denigrate the other's decisions. But there is an unspoken bond between them, a mutual respect. "He loves helping her," says the actor, "and he loves her."

Sutherland, on the other hand, doesn't just think it's time for a female President - he believes the US is in peril without one. "We cannot do it with a man. We just cannot ...

"If I were to trust either my wife or myself as a reaction to whatever happens in reality, I would go 100 per cent with my wife because her natural, instinctive reactions would just embarrass me."

Sutherland insists he knows little of politics. He hasn't voted in 40 years - being a resident of the US and a citizen of Canada makes it impossible, he says - yet finds this no reason not to slag off the present administration. And yet, for someone who claims to know little, it's a topic from which he rarely strays.

A simple question about the likelihood of a real-life Mackenzie Allen is an opportunity to name-drop at least six countries where it has already happened. Then he's off, dissecting Gore's campaign, the genocide accord, the Holocaust, the state of General Motors, "stupid gun laws", execution, patriotism, the history of America's wars - even Truman's health plan in 1947.

It would be easy to tune out if his opinions weren't articulated with the passion, weight and intelligence he possesses on screen.

Ask him who he based Templeton on and he says, his star publicist, Catherine Olim, although this may also be a joke.

Does he still get the same buzz out of acting as he once did?

"I don't get the same buzz out of anything," he hoots. "It's different, you know. Possibly the only thing that's more pleasurable is farting."

There's a speech he has quoted on countless occasions to illustrate his point. Joseph Broadsky, the late Russian poet was speaking to his graduating class in 1988. Sutherland is about to spill the details when he's swept away by another train of thought. "Did you read Harold Pinter's Nobel prize speech? Go online and get it ... It is absolutely definitive and brilliant and you owe it to yourself to read it because it's perfect. What were we talking about?"

Joseph Broadsky.

"Oh yes. He looked at the class and he said, 'You know, this is the best day of the rest of your life. Everything else is going to be downhill from now on. You're going to get things. The more things you get, the more boring it's going to be."

Sutherland's favourite part, however, is when Broadsky encourages his charges to stay passionate. "Because passion alone is a remedy against boredom. So with respect to acting, I am probably more passionate about it now than I've ever been in my life. It thrills me."