Jonathan Vincent "Jon" Voight (born December 29, 1938) is an American film and television actor. He came to prominence at the end of the 1960s, with a performance as a would-be gigolo in
1969's Best Picture winner,
Midnight Cowboy, for which he earned his first Academy Award nomination. Throughout the following decades, Voight built his reputation with an array of challenging roles, appearing in such landmark films as
Deliverance (1972), and
Coming Home (1978), for which he received an Academy Award for
Best Actor. Voight's portrayal of sportscaster/journalist
Howard Cosell, in the 2001 biopic
Ali, earned critical raves and his fourth Oscar nomination. He starred in the
seventh season of
24 as the villain Jonas Hodges.
Voight is the father of actor
James Haven and actress
Angelina Jolie, as well as brother of singer-songwriter
Chip Taylor and geologist Barry Voight.
Early life
Voight was born in
Yonkers, New York, the son of Barbara (née Kamp; born January 7, 1910) and Elmer Voight (October 29, 1909 – June 1973), a professional golfer. His
maternal grandparents were German, and his
paternal grandfather was an immigrant from the city of
Košice (German: Kaschau) in
Slovakia. Voight was raised
Catholic and attended
Archbishop Stepinac High School in
White Plains, New York, where he first took an interest in acting - playing the comic role of Count Pepi Le Loup in the school's annual musical,
The Song of Norway. After graduating from high school in 1956, he went to college at
The Catholic University of America in
Washington, D.C., where he majored in art and graduated with a
B.A. in 1960. At CUA, he demonstrated his artistic skill by designing the cardinal that adorned the
center of the floor of the basketball court. This section of floor now resides on display in the school's Pryzbyla University Center.
Early career
After graduation, Voight moved to New York City, where he pursued an acting career. In 1962 he married actress
Lauri Peters, whom he met while she was playing Leisl in the stage version of "The Sound of Music" and he replaced Brian Davies as Rolf; her film credits include 1962's
Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation and 1963's
Summer Holiday. In the early sixties, Voight found work in television, appearing in several episodes of
Gunsmoke, between 1962 and 1966, as well as guest spots on
Naked City, and
The Defenders, both in 1963, and
Twelve O'Clock High, in 1966.
His theatre career took off in January 1965, playing Rodolfo in
Arthur Miller's
A View From The Bridge in an
Off-Broadway revival.
Voight's film debut did not come until 1967, when he took a part in Phillip Kaufman's crimefighter spoof,
Fearless Frank. Voight also took a small role in 1967's western,
Hour of the Gun, directed by veteran helmer
John Sturges. That year he and Lauri Peters were divorced, after five years of marriage. In 1968 Voight took a role in director
Paul Williams'
Out of It.
While Voight pursued acting, his brother Wes found success as a songwriter under the nom de plume
Chip Taylor. Taylor penned
The Troggs' 1966 hit,
Wild Thing, as well as
Angel of the Morning. Another of Jon's brothers, Barry Voight, studied
geology at
Columbia University and became a world-renowned
volcanologist at
Pennsylvania State University.
[Barry Voight bio from Penn State]
1970s stardom
In 1969, Voight was cast in the groundbreaking
Midnight Cowboy, a film that would make his career. Voight played Joe Buck, a naïve male
hustler from
Texas, adrift in
New York City. He comes under the tutelage of
Dustin Hoffman's Ratso Rizzo, a tubercular petty
thief and
con artist. The film explored late
sixties New York and the development of an unlikely, but poignant friendship between the two main characters. Directed by
John Schlesinger and based on a novel by
James Leo Herlihy, the film struck a chord with critics. Because of its controversial themes, the film was released with an X rating and would make history by being the only X-rated feature to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Both Voight and co-star Hoffman were nominated for Best Actor, but they lost out to
John Wayne, star of that year's
True Grit.
In 1970 Voight appeared in
Mike Nichols' adaptation of
Catch-22, and re-teamed with director
Paul Williams to star in
The Revolutionary, as a left wing college student struggling with his conscience.
Voight next appeared in 1972's
Deliverance. Directed by
John Boorman, from a script that poet
James Dickey had helped to adapt from his novel of the same name, it tells the story of a
canoe trip gone awry in a feral, backwoods America. The film and the performances of Voight and co-star
Burt Reynolds received great critical acclaim and were popular with audiences.
On 12 December 1971 Voight married model and actress
Marcheline Bertrand. Their son
James Haven Voight was born in 1973; their daughter
Angelina Jolie Voight followed in 1975. Both children would go on to enter the film business, James as an actor and writer, and Angelina as a movie star in her own right. Angelina went on to receive three
Golden Globe Awards, two
Screen Actors Guild Awards, and an
Academy Award. She is also the
Goodwill Ambassador for the
UN Refugee Agency.
Voight played a directionless young boxer in 1973's
The All American Boy, then appeared in the 1974 film,
Conrack, directed by
Martin Ritt. Based on
Pat Conroy's autobiographical novel
The Water Is Wide, Voight portrayed the title character, an idealistic young schoolteacher sent to teach underprivileged black children on a remote
South Carolina island. The same year he appeared in
The Odessa File, based on
Frederick Forsyth's thriller, playing a young German journalist who discovers a conspiracy to protect former
Nazis still operating within
Germany. This film first teamed him with the actor-director
Maximilian Schell, for whom Voight would appear in 1976's
End of the Game, a psychological
thriller based on a story by Swiss novelist and playwright,
Friedrich Dürrenmatt.
Voight was
Steven Spielberg's first choice for the role of Matt Hooper in the 1975 blockbuster
Jaws, but he turned down the role, which was ultimately played by
Richard Dreyfuss.
[Joseph McBride, Steven Spielberg: A Biography (Da Capo Press, 1999), ISBN 9780306809002,]
p.236. Excerpt available at Google Books.
In 1978, Voight portrayed the paraplegic Vietnam veteran Luke Martin in
Hal Ashby's film
Coming Home. Voight, who was awarded
Best Actor at the
Cannes Film Festival, for his portrait of an embittered paraplegic, reportedly based on real-life
Vietnam veteran-turned-anti-war activist
Ron Kovic, with whom Fonda falls in love. The film included a much-talked-about love scene between the two.
Jane Fonda won her second
Best Actress award for her role, and Voight won for Best Actor in a Leading Role.
Voight's marriage to Marcheline Bertrand failed in 1978. The following year, Voight once again put on
boxing gloves, starring in 1979's remake of the 1931
Wallace Beery and
Jackie Cooper vehicle,
The Champ, with Voight playing the part of an alcoholic ex-heavyweight and a young
Rick Schroder playing the role of his adoring son. The film was an international success, but less popular with American audiences.
Career in the 1980s
He next re-teamed with director Ashby in 1982's
Lookin' to Get Out, in which he played Alex Kovac, a con man who has run into debt with New York mobsters and hopes to win enough in Las Vegas to pay them off. Voight both co-wrote the script and also co-produced. He also produced and acted in 1983's
Table for Five, in which he played a widower bringing up his children by himself.
In 1985, Voight hooked up with Russian writer and director
Andrei Konchalovsky to play the role of escaped con Manny Manheim in
Runaway Train. The script was based on a story by
Akira Kurosawa, and paired Voight with
Eric Roberts as a fellow escapee. Voight received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and won the
Golden Globe's award for Best Actor. Roberts was also honored for his performance, receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
Voight followed up this and other performances with a role in the 1986 film,
Desert Bloom, and reportedly experienced a "spiritual awakening" toward the end of the decade. In 1989 Voight starred in and helped write
Eternity, which dealt with a television reporter's efforts to uncover corruption.
Work in the 1990s
He made his first foray into television movies, acting in 1991's
Chernobyl: The Final Warning, followed by
The Last of his Tribe, in 1992. He followed with 1992's
The Rainbow Warrior for ABC, the story of the
ill-fated Greenpeace ship sunk by
French operatives in the
Auckland harbour. For the remainder of the decade, Voight would alternate between feature films and television movies, including a starring role in the 1993 miniseries
Return to Lonesome Dove, a continuation of
Larry McMurtry's
western saga, 1989's
Lonesome Dove. Voight played Captain Woodrow F. Call, the part played by
Tommy Lee Jones in the original miniseries. Voight made a cameo appearance as himself on the
Seinfeld episode "
The Mom & Pop Store" airing November 17, 1994, in which
George Costanza buys a car that appears to be owned by Jon Voight. Voight described the process leading up to the episode in an interview on the Red Carpet at the 2006 BAFTA Emmy Awards:
Well what happened was I was asked to be on Seinfeld. They said: "Would you do a Seinfeld?" And I said, and I just happened to know to see a few Seinfelds and I knew these guys were really tops; they were really, really clever guys, and I liked the show. And so I said "Sure!" and I thought they would ask me to do a walk-on, the way it came: "Would you come be part of the show?" And I said "Yeah, sure I'll do it." You know what I mean? Then I got the script and my name was on every page because it was about my car. And I laughed; it was hysterically funny. So I was really delighted to do it. The writer came up to me and he said "Jon, would you come take a look at my car to see if you ever owned it?", because the writer wrote it from a real experience where someone sold him the car based on the fact that it was my car. And I went down and I looked at the car and I said "No, I never had this car." So unfortunately I had to give him the bad news. But it was a funny episode.[www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8o140TFyAA]
