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| Birth Name(s) : Jonathan Voight |
Date of Birth: December 29, 1983 |
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| Profession:
Actor |
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Full Jon Voight Biography
| Father of Angelina Jolie, Jon Voight had his breakout role in "Midnight Cowboy" (1969) as a male prostitute. He has since acted in many feature films and even tried his hand at directing with "The Tin Soldier" (1995). |
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Additional Jon Voight Biography
Jonathan Vincent Voight (born December 29, 1938) is an Academy Award-winning American actor. Voight, an Oscar-winner and four-time nominee, has had a long and distinguished career as both a leading man and, in recent years, character actor, with an extensive range. He came to prominence at the end of the sixties, with a riveting 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 father of famous actress Angelina Jolie.
After graduation, Voight moved to New York City, where he pursued an acting career. In 1962 he married actress Lauri Peters, whose 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.
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 the lead role in counterculture director Paul Williams' Out of It. Shot in a vérité style reminiscent of John Cassavettes, Out of It tapped into the zeitgeist and was geared toward the burgeoning youth culture.
Now a "name" actor, in 1970 Voight went on to join the all-star cast of Mike Nichols' ill-fated adaptation of Catch-22. Adapted by Buck Henry from Joseph Heller's comic anti-war novel, and featuring the acting talents of Voight, Alan Arkin as the main character of John Yossarian, Anthony Perkins, Art Garfunkel, Bob Newhart, Richard Benjamin, and Orson Welles, the film failed to connect with either the critics or audiences, despite the film's intentional parallels with the then-raging war in Vietnam. The same year, Voight re-teamed with director Paul Williams to star in The Revolutionary, as a left wing college student struggling with his conscience.
On 12 December 1971 Voight married model Marcheline Bertrand. Their son James Haven was born in 1973, followed by daughter Angelina Jolie in 1975. Both children would go on to enter their father's business, James as an actor and assistant director, and Angelina as a major Oscar-winning movie star in her own right.
In 1978, Voight assumed a role that would earn him a second major triumph, that of the paraplegic Vietnam vet Luke Martin in the Hal Ashby-directed film Coming Home. The film marked the beginning of the post-Vietnam War era and reflected a coming-to-terms with the emotional costs of both the war and the anti-war movement. The presence of Jane Fonda in the female lead assured some controversy, given her outspoken views during the war, but her portrayal of a military wife who volunteers her services to help disabled vets was well-received. Voight played 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. The film was major winner at the Oscars that year with Jane Fonda winning her second Best Actress statuette and presenter Diana Ross calling Voight to the podium, where she presented him with his first Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role.
The following year, Voight had the lead role in the television movie The Fixer, in which he played Jack Killoran, a lawyer who crosses ethical lines in order to "fix" things for his wealthy clients. A near-fatal accident awakens his dormant conscience and Killoran soon runs afoul of his former clients. He also took a substantial role in Tony Scott's 1997 political thriller, Enemy of the State, in which Voight played the heavy opposite Will Smith's heroic lawyer.
That year, he also appeared in Zoolander, directed by Ben Stiller who starred as the title character, a vapid supermodel with humble roots. Voight appeared as Zoolander's coal-miner father. The film extracted both pathos and cruel humor from the scenes of Zoolander's return home, when he entered the mines alongside his father and brothers and Voight's character expressed his unspoken disgust at his son's chosen profession.
Also in 2001, Voight joined Leelee Sobieski, Hank Azaria, and David Schwimmer in the made-for-television movie, Uprising, which was based on the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto. Voight played Major-General Juergen Stroop, the officer responsible for the destruction of the Jewish resistance.
In 2007, he played United States Secretary of Defense John Keller in the summer blockbuster film, Transformers. |
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Jon Voight Quote(s)
| Well sir, I may not be a for-real cowboy . . . But I am one hell of a stud! |
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