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Quick Facts
- NAME: Jon Voight
- OCCUPATION: Film Actor
- BIRTH DATE: December 29, 1938 (Age: 74)
- PLACE OF BIRTH: Yonkers, New York
- Full Name: Jonathan Voight
- ZODIAC SIGN: Capricorn
Best Known For
Actor Jon Voight’s role as Joe Buck in the groundbreaking film Midnight Cowboy earned him an Oscar nomination and launched his career into the big time.
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Jon Voight - Meet the Guest
A preview of William Shatner's interview with Jon Voight.
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Play NowJon Voight. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 11:04, May 21, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/jon-voight-9520019.
Jon Voight. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/jon-voight-9520019 [Accessed 21 May 2013].
"Jon Voight." 2013. The Biography Channel website. May 21 2013, 11:04 http://www.biography.com/people/jon-voight-9520019.
"Jon Voight," The Biography Channel website, 2013, http://www.biography.com/people/jon-voight-9520019 [accessed May 21, 2013].
"Jon Voight," The Biography Channel website, http://www.biography.com/people/jon-voight-9520019 (accessed May 21, 2013).
Jon Voight [Internet]. The Biography Channel website; 2013 [cited 2013 May 21] Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/jon-voight-9520019.
Jon Voight, http://www.biography.com/people/jon-voight-9520019 (last visited May 21, 2013).
Jon Voight. The Biography Channel website. 2013. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/jon-voight-9520019. Accessed May 21, 2013.
Synopsis
Jon Voight was born December 29, 1938 in Yonkers, New York. His 1969 role in Midnight Cowboy launched his career. For the next two decades, his film career was a mix of incredible highs and forgettable misses. After appearing in the 1995 drama Heat, he once again began to star in big budget offerings. In recent years, he has enjoyed a resurgence as a sought-after character actor.
Profile
Actor. Born Jonathan Vincent Voight on December 29, 1938 in Yonkers, New York. The son of a Czechoslovakian-American golf pro, Jon Voight discovered his love for acting as a teenager. Following a stint on Broadway, he appeared in his first film, Fearless Frank, in 1965. However, it was his 1969 role as country boy-turned-hustler Joe Buck in the groundbreaking film Midnight Cowboy that earned him an Oscar nomination and launched his career into the big time.
For the next two decades, Voight's film career was a mix of incredible highs and forgettable misses. His many memorable projects from this period include 1972's Deliverance and 1978's Coming Home for which he won a Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of a quadriplegic Vietnam War veteran opposite Jane Fonda. In 1985, he ended a five-year dry spell with an Academy Award nod for his performance in Japanese director Akira Kurosawa's thriller Runaway Train. A "spiritual reawakening" then led Voight to work on a number of intellectually related and doomed film projects.
After playing Robert De Niro's underworld contact in Michael Mann's 1995 drama Heat, Voight once again began to star in big budget offerings, including 1996's Mission: Impossible, 1997's The Rainmaker and 1998's Enemy of the State. In 2001, he delivered well-received performances as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Pearl Harbor and as the patriarch in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, a film that starred his estranged daughter, actress Angelina Jolie. That year he also brilliantly channeled sportscaster Howard Cosell in the biopic Ali, capturing his fourth Oscar nomination.
In recent years, Voight has enjoyed a resurgence as one of Hollywood's most sought-after character actors. He received an Emmy nomination in 2002 for his performance in the acclaimed NBC miniseries Uprising. He also found great success with the 2004 sleeper hit Holes and Jonathan Demme's 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidate. Voight next co-stars with Edward Norton and Colin Farrell in Pride and Glory, a story of familial corruption among New York City police officers, due out in 2009.
Jon Voight was married to Lauri Peters from 1962 to 1967 and to Marcheline Bertrand from 1971 to 1978. He has two children, actor James Haven and actress Angelina Jolie, with Bertrand.
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