Daily Inspiration Quote by Kiefer Sutherland

The interesting thing about Sutherland's admission isn't the regret; it's the refusal to perform the usual actorly myth that every project is "a learning experience" and therefore untouchable. He gives you the unglamorous truth of a working career: the batting average matters. By saying he'd "like to throw away" movies, he punctures the promotional pact where past work is permanently framed as a proud chapter, never an error to be edited out.

The key move is the qualification: "That's not to say that I went in with that attitude". He's defending against an industry suspicion that actors coast, cash checks, or treat certain films as disposable from day one. Instead, he insists on intention as a kind of moral alibi. Hope and effort are non-negotiable; outcomes are not. That distinction is crucial to how Hollywood failure is narrated. A bad film can be forgiven if you can credibly argue you didn't phone it in.

"Some films just don't work" sounds passive, almost gentle, but it's doing heavy lifting. It shifts blame away from any single person and toward the messy chemistry of filmmaking: scripts that collapse in the edit, mismatched tones, studio notes, casting that doesn't click, a director chasing a different movie than the one on the page. Sutherland is also managing legacy. He's been both prestige-adjacent and relentlessly mainstream; this line reads like an actor making peace with scale and volume, asserting craft without pretending control. In a culture that treats output as identity, he's asking for a more adult accounting: you can show up fully and still make something you'd rather erase.