Jon Voight has received numerous accolades including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and four Golden Globe Awards as well as nominations for four Primetime Emmy Awards.
70 Facts About Jon Voight
2.
Jon Voight first came to prominence for his performance as Joe Buck, a would-be gigolo, in Midnight Cowboy.
3.
Jon Voight received Golden Globe Award and was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in Runaway Train.
4.
Jon Voight is known for his role in the National Treasure film series.
5.
Jon Voight is known for his television roles including as Nazi officer Jurgen Stroop in Uprising and Pope John Paul II in the eponymous miniseries.
6.
Jon Voight appeared in thriller series 24 in its seventh season.
7.
Jon Voight is the father of actress Angelina Jolie and actor James Haven.
8.
Jonathan Vincent Voight was born on December 29,1938, in Yonkers, New York, to Barbara and Elmer Voight, a professional golfer.
9.
Jon Voight has two brothers, Barry Voight, a former volcanologist at Pennsylvania State University, and James Wesley Voight, known as Chip Taylor, a singer-songwriter who wrote "Wild Thing" and "Angel of the Morning".
10.
Jon Voight was raised as a Catholic and attended Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains, New York, where he first took an interest in acting, playing the comedic role of Count Pepi Le Loup in the school's annual musical, The Song of Norway.
11.
Jon Voight graduated from the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, where he studied under Sanford Meisner.
12.
Jon Voight took a small role in 1967's western, Hour of the Gun, directed by veteran helmer John Sturges.
13.
Jon Voight played Joe Buck, a naive male hustler from Texas, adrift in New York City.
14.
Jon Voight comes under the tutelage of Dustin Hoffman's Ratso Rizzo, a tubercular petty thief and con artist.
15.
In 1970, Jon 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.
16.
Jon Voight appeared at the Studio Arena Theater, in Buffalo, New York, in the Tennessee Williams play A Streetcar Named Desire from 1973 to 1974 as Stanley Kowalski.
17.
Jon Voight played a directionless young boxer in 1973's The All American Boy, then appeared in the 1974 film Conrack, directed by Martin Ritt.
18.
Jon Voight was Steven Spielberg's first choice for the role of Matt Hooper in the 1975 film Jaws, but he turned down the role, which was ultimately played by Richard Dreyfuss.
19.
In 1978, Jon Voight portrayed the paraplegic Vietnam veteran Luke Martin in Hal Ashby's film Coming Home, and was awarded Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival, for his portrait of a cynical, yet noble paraplegic, reportedly based on real-life Vietnam veteran-turned-antiwar-activist Ron Kovic, with whom Jane Fonda's character falls in love.
20.
Fonda won her second Best Actress award for her role, and Jon Voight won for Best Actor in a Leading Role at the Oscars.
21.
In 1979, Jon Voight put on boxing gloves, starring in 1979's remake of the 1931 Wallace Beery and Jackie Cooper vehicle The Champ, with Jon Voight playing the part of an alcoholic ex-heavyweight and a young Ricky Schroder playing the role of his adoring son.
22.
Jon Voight next reteamed 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.
23.
Jon Voight produced and acted in 1983's Table for Five, in which he played a widower bringing up his children by himself.
24.
Also in 1983, Jon Voight was slated to play Robert Harmon in John Cassavetes' Golden Bear-winning Love Streams, having performed the role on stage in 1981.
25.
However, a few weeks before shooting began, Jon Voight announced that he wanted to direct the picture and was consequently dropped.
26.
In 1985, Jon Voight teamed up with Russian writer and director Andrei Konchalovsky to play the role of escaped con Oscar "Manny" Manheim in Runaway Train.
27.
Jon Voight received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and won the Golden Globe's award for Best Actor.
28.
Jon 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.
29.
In 1989 Jon Voight starred in and helped write Eternity, which dealt with a television reporter's efforts to uncover corruption.
30.
Jon Voight made his first acting debut into television films, acting in 1991's Chernobyl: The Final Warning, followed by The Last of his Tribe, in 1992.
31.
Jon Voight followed with 1992's The Rainbow Warrior for ABC, the story of the ill-fated Greenpeace ship sunk by French operatives in Auckland Harbour.
32.
Jon Voight described the process leading up to the episode in an interview on the Red Carpet at the 2006 BAFTA Emmy Awards:.
33.
In 1992, Jon Voight appeared in the HBO film The Last of His Tribe.
34.
In 1995, Jon Voight played the role of "Nate", a sophisticated fence, in the crime drama film Heat, directed by Michael Mann, and appeared in the television films Convict Cowboy and The Tin Soldier, directing the latter film.
35.
Jon Voight next appeared in 1996's blockbuster film Mission: Impossible, directed by Brian De Palma and starring Tom Cruise.
36.
Jon Voight played the role of spymaster James Phelps, a role originated by Peter Graves in the television series.
37.
In 1997, Jon Voight appeared in six films, beginning with Rosewood, based on the 1923 destruction of the primarily black town of Rosewood, Florida, by the white residents of nearby Sumner.
38.
Jon Voight played John Wright, a white Rosewood storeowner who follows his conscience and protects his black customers from the white rage.
39.
Jon Voight next appeared in Anaconda, set in the Amazon; he played Paul Sarone, a snake hunter obsessed with a fabled giant anaconda, who hijacks an unwitting National Geographic film crew who are looking for a remote Indian tribe.
40.
Jon Voight next appeared in a supporting role in Oliver Stone's U Turn, portraying a blind man.
41.
Jon Voight took a supporting role in The Rainmaker, adopted from the John Grisham novel and directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
42.
Jon Voight played an unscrupulous lawyer representing an insurance company, facing off with a neophyte lawyer played by Matt Damon.
43.
Jon Voight took a substantial role in Tony Scott's 1998 political thriller, Enemy of the State, in which he played Will Smith's character's stalwart antagonist from the NSA.
44.
Jon Voight was reunited with director Boorman in 1998's The General.
45.
Jon Voight portrays Inspector Ned Kenny, determined to bring Cahill to justice.
46.
Jon Voight played a blunt, autocratic football coach, pitted in a test of wills against his star player, portrayed by James Van Der Beek.
47.
Jon Voight played Noah in the 1999 television production Noah's Ark, and appeared in Second String, for TV.
48.
Jon Voight appeared with Cheryl Ladd in the feature A Dog of Flanders, a remake of a popular film set in Belgium.
49.
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 Jon Voight's character expressed his unspoken disgust at his son's chosen profession.
50.
Also in 2001, Jon Voight joined Leelee Sobieski, Hank Azaria and David Schwimmer in the made-for-television film Uprising, which was based on the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto.
51.
Jon Voight played Major-General Juergen Stroop, the German officer responsible for the destruction of the Jewish resistance, and received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie.
52.
Jon Voight was almost unrecognizable under his make-up and toupee, as he impersonated the sports broadcaster Howard Cosell.
53.
Jon Voight received his fourth Academy Award nomination, this time for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, for his performance.
54.
In 2004, Jon Voight joined Nicolas Cage, in National Treasure as Patrick Gates, the father of Cage's character.
55.
Also in 2007, Jon Voight reprised his role as Patrick Gates in National Treasure: Book of Secrets.
56.
Jon Voight appeared in Bratz with his goddaughter Skyler Shaye.
57.
In 2009, Voight played Jonas Hodges, the American antagonist, in the seventh season of the hit Fox drama 24, a role that many argue is based on real life figures Alfried Krupp, Johann Rall and Erik Prince.
58.
Jon Voight plays the chief executive officer of a fictional private military company based in northern Virginia called Starkwood, which has loose resemblances to Academi and ThyssenKrupp.
59.
Jon Voight then went on to recur for 10 episodes of Season 7.
60.
Jon Voight joined Dennis Haysbert as the only two actors ever to have been credited with the "Special Guest Appearance" card on 24.
61.
That same year Jon Voight lent his voice talents in the Thomas Nelson audio Bible production known as The Word of Promise.
62.
In 2013, Jon Voight made his much-acclaimed appearance on Ray Donovan as Mickey Donovan, the main character's conniving father.
63.
On March 26,2019, Jon Voight was appointed to a six-year term on the Board of Trustees of the Kennedy Center in Washington DC.
64.
In 2022, Jon Voight was cast in Megalopolis, directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
65.
Jon Voight worked for George McGovern's voter registrations efforts in the inner cities of Los Angeles.
66.
Jon Voight endorsed Republican presidential nominees Mitt Romney and Donald Trump in the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections respectively.
67.
In November 2020, after the United States presidential election, Jon Voight released a statement through his Twitter account, in which he stated he was very angry that Joe Biden had won the election.
68.
In 2022, following a mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, in a Facebook video, Jon Voight called for gun control, arguing that "proper qualifications" and "testing" should be necessary for gun ownership.
69.
In 1962, Jon Voight married actress Lauri Peters, whom he met when they both appeared in the original Broadway production of The Sound of Music.
70.
Jon Voight has never remarried in the 40-plus years since his second divorce.