Jonathan Vincent "Jon" Voight (born December 29, 1938) is an American film
actor. He has had a long and distinguished career as both a leading man and, in recent years,
character actor, with an extensive and compelling range.fact He came to prominence at the end of the
sixties, with a performance as a would-be hustler 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 and has appeared in such landmark films as 1972's
Deliverance, and 1978's
Coming Home, for which he received an Academy Award for Best Actor. Voight's impersonation of the late sportscaster/journalist
Howard Cosell, in 2001's biopic
Ali, earned Voight critical raves and his fourth Oscar nomination. He is also the estranged
[Jon Voight on making Deliverance review | Film Reviews - Times Online] father of actress
Angelina Jolie, and brother of singer-songwriter
Chip Taylor.
Biography
Early life
Voight was born in
Yonkers, New York, the son of Barbara (
née Kamp;
New York, January 7, 1910 –
Palm Beach County,
Florida, December 3, 1995) and Elmer Voight (October 29, 1909 – June, 1973), a professional golfer. His maternal grandparents were German; his paternal grandfather was an immigrant from the city of
Košice in North of Austria-Hungary (now
Slovakia).
[[1]] Voight attended
Archbishop Stepinac High School in
White Plains, New York, where he first took an interest in acting and played the role of
Puck in a production of
Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. 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.
