Jon Voight

Jonathan Vincent Voight (born December 29, 1938) is an American actor.

Jonathan Vincent Voight was born on December 29, 1938, in Yonkers, New York, to Barbara (Kamp) and Elmer Voight (Voytka), a professional golfer.

He 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".

Voight's paternal grandfather and his paternal grandmother's parents were Slovak immigrants, while his maternal grandfather and his maternal grandmother's parents were German immigrants.

Political activist Joseph P. Kamp was his great-uncle through his mother.

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.

Following his graduation in 1956, he enrolled at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where he majored in art and graduated with a B.A. degree in 1960.

After graduation, Voight moved to New York City, where he pursued an acting career.

He graduated from the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, where he studied under Sanford Meisner.

Voight is associated with the angst and unruliness that typified the late-1960s counterculture.

He 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.

In the early 1960s, Voight found work in television, appearing in several episodes of Gunsmoke, between 1963 and 1968, as well as guest spots on Naked City and The Defenders, both in 1963, and Twelve O'Clock High, in 1966 and Cimarron Strip in 1968.

The film explored late 1960s 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 and audiences.

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 Hoffman were nominated for Best Actor, but lost out to John Wayne in True Grit.

Voight started his off-Broadway career in a revue called O Oysters, which ran in early 1961.

He made his Broadway debut in the fall of 1961 as Rolf in The Sound of Music.

Voight's theater 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.

He also took a small role in 1967's western, Hour of the Gun, directed by veteran helmer John Sturges.

In 1968 he took a role in director Paul Williams's Out of It.

In 1968, Voight was cast in the groundbreaking Midnight Cowboy (1969), the film that would make his career.

He 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.

His other Oscar-nominated roles were for playing Joe Buck, a would-be gigolo, in Midnight Cowboy (1969), a ruthless bank robber Oscar "Manny" Manheim in Runaway Train (1985) and as sportscaster Howard Cosell in Ali (2001).

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.

Other notable films include Deliverance (1972), The Champ (1979), Heat (1995), Mission: Impossible (1996), The Rainmaker (1997), Enemy of the State (1998), Pearl Harbor (2001), Zoolander (2001), Holes (2003), Glory Road (2006), Transformers (2007), and Pride and Glory (2008).

He is also known for his role in the National Treasure film series.

Voight next starred in 1972's Deliverance. Directed by John Boorman, from a script that James Dickey had helped to adapt from his own novel of the same name, it tells the story of a canoe trip in a feral, backwoods America.

Both the film and the performances of Voight and co-star Burt Reynolds received great critical acclaim, and were popular with audiences.

Voight also 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.

Voight won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of a paraplegic Vietnam veteran in Coming Home (1978).

Voight is also known for his television roles, including as Nazi officer Jürgen Stroop in Uprising (2001) and Pope John Paul II on the eponymous miniseries (2005).

His role as Mickey Donovan on the Showtime drama series Ray Donovan brought him newfound acclaim and attention among critics and audiences, as well as his fourth Golden Globe win in 2014.

He also appeared on the thriller series 24 in its seventh season.

Despite originally adopting liberal views, Voight has gained attention in his later years for his outspoken conservative and religious beliefs.

He is the father of actress Angelina Jolie and actor James Haven.

In 2019, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.

Films in which Voight has appeared have grossed more than $5.2 billion worldwide.