Rossif Sutherland wasn’t initially interested in the family business

TORONTO – Rossif Sutherland grew up watching his screen legend dad Donald Sutherland and TV star half-brother Kiefer Sutherland, but their work didn’t inspire him to join the family business. At least initially, anyhow.

“I didn’t particularly want to be an actor growing up although I was around it all the time,” said Sutherland, whose road-trip flick “I’m Yours” opens Friday in Toronto.

“I didn’t really get the craft. I figured it out only later on in my life.”

Still, Sutherland, whose mother is actress Francine Racette, says now that he has embraced acting and his family is his “most important audience.”

Speaking at last September’s Toronto International Film Festival, Sutherland says he initially read the script for “I’m Yours” with his father, who immediately gave his stamp of approval.

Donald Sutherland and Kiefer Sutherland both showed up at the fest for the premiere of the Leonard Farlinger-directed film, about a New York professional (Sutherland) who ditches his career when he meets a free-spirited French-Canadian woman (Karine Vanasse) on the eve of his birthday. He says the elder Sutherland fell “madly in love” with the script.

The casting of Vanasse (“Pan-Am”) also evolved from a Sutherland family connection. Rossif Sutherland was reading his script to his mother when she said the character sounded like a French-Canadian girl.

For his part, Farlinger says his inspiration included “Something Wild.”

“I always wanted to do a road movie and I always wanted to do a romance,” said Farlinger, whose previous credits include “A Perfect Son.” “I guess I wanted to do a love story that was challenging and hopefully not all that cynical.”

Sutherland says the film’s producer, Jennifer Jonas, has a house on the same lake where his parents have a home and that they’d always wanted to work together.

“I read the script and I fell in love and I felt like it was a story I could tell,” he said.

“You know, it’s a story of a guy who is reinventing his life. He’s done everything right, he’s followed the capitalist mode, he’s gone to all the best schools, he’s made a bunch of money, he’s been successful in all the way our society judges somebody. But it doesn’t really work for him anymore and so he’s going through kind of a midlife crisis although he’s not at the middle of his life.”

Added the actor, who also stars on the Showcase drama “King”: “It’s a love story, but it’s also in many ways a story about falling in love with life again.”

The main characters travel from Manhattan to North Bay, Ont., and the film includes some gorgeous Canuck panoramas. Both Sutherland and Farlinger say they feel a special connection to the Canadian wilderness.

“It feels like when you’re there it’s like your life begins each time you go back there,” Farlinger says of his cabin in northern Ontairo.

Sutherland has strong memories of his parents home in Quebec’s Eastern Townships.

“I used to go to every Christmas and every summer. That place has always been a collection of so many memories,” he says.

“I spent nine months out of the year going to school. It was in that place during those few months that I just had a concentration of life.”