Jon Voight Biography

Jon was a happy, adaptable and, above all, decent student. Taking to heart his religion's call for us to be good to one another, he found it hard to accept that his Protestant friends were to inevitably burn for Eternity. "I was always trying to be a liaison between the attitudes I was being taught by the Church and my buddies," he later recalled . "I would say 'Well, you don't have to take it THAT seriously'." This was a problem Jon would face up until his twenties, as after high school he attended the Catholic University of America, in Washington DC. The system of morality he formed during his Catholic education - altered, and maybe purified by the loving spirit of the Sixties counter-culture - would inform his choice of roles until he reached his mid-Fifties.

Graduating from University in 1960, after a spell in the Army Reserves at Fort Dix, he went to New York to be an actor. Joining the Neighbourhood Playhouse, he studied under Sanford Meisner for the next four years (he'd later work with the Center Theatre Group). And, boy, did he need to study. In the same year he arrived in New York, he made his off-Broadway debut in a play called O Oysters, garnering one review that said he could "neither walk nor talk". Ouch.

For a year, Voight struggled to find work, worried that his height (he's 6' 4") would count against him. Then his life was changed quite drastically by a chance encounter. One day, unable to afford a cab, he was standing forlornly in the rain when a fellow on a scooter pulled up, asking him if he wanted a lift. It turned out the man was a theatrical agent for musical acts and, within two days, he'd scored Voight an audition for the original Broadway production of The Sound Of Music. On the day of the audition, Jon was suffering an almighty cold, but his ability was spotted by the show's creator, Richard Rogers, who chose him to play Rolf, the young boy who turns Nazi. His girlfriend, Liesl Von Trapp, was played by Laurie Peters, an actress then on a good filmic run, appearing opposite James Stewart in Mr Hobbs Takes A Vacation and Cliff Richard in Summer Holiday. She and Voight would marry in 1962. He now says he was not ready for such commitment, which explains why they were divorced five years later.

Jon continued to battle for parts. He won a few minor TV roles, in such series as Gunsmoke, but mostly his life was the theatre. Here he made many friends and connections, one being the young Dustin Hoffman who Voight met when appearing in a 1965 production of Arthur Miller's View From The Bridge, starring Robert Duvall (Hoffman was the assistant to director Ulu Grosbard). Hoffman would recall how the girls flocked after Voight backstage - tall, blonde and handsome, it was as if a matinee idol was working off-Broadway. In 1966, Jon spent a season at the California National Shakespeare Festival, then performed in That Summer, That Fall for which, in 1967, he won a Theatre World award.

Now came the film roles. First, in 1967, came Hour Of The Gun, where Jon played Curly Bill, one of the outlaws being hunted down by Wyatt Earp after the gunfight at the OK Corral. Then came Fearless Frank, filmed a couple of years previously, where Voight played a perfect crimefighter, drawn to ruin by his own ego. And then, so quickly, there was the breakthrough. Well, in relation to the number of films he'd made, it was quick. The process of winning the breakthrough role, though, was long, humiliating and painful.

Midnight Cowboy, a novel written by James Leo Herlihy, concerned a sexually confused Texas dishwasher named Joe Buck, who travels to New York City in the hope of becoming a gigolo kept in fine style by rich women. While pursuing this seedy career he falls in with consumptive hustler Ratso Rizzo and, gradually, Buck learns that happiness lies elsewhere. The book was heavily concerned with homosexuality, and this was perhaps one of the attractions for John Schlesinger, a British director on the up after A Kind Of Loving, Billy Liar and the multi-Oscar-winning Darling. Schlesinger was gay but, living in a still-repressive London, was forced to keep it a secret in order to avoid damage to his personal and professional life. Liberated somewhat by his experiences in Los Angeles, he'd contact producer Jerome Hellman and set about putting this controversial material onscreen.

It was now 1966 and Schlesinger and Hellman hired playwright Jack Gelber to write the script. Gelber in turn suggested a young actor to play Rizzo. This was Dustin Hoffman, then appearing in an off-Broadway play called Eh? Schlesinger was not convinced, particularly after he saw Hoffman in The Graduate, but was won over by a coffee-shop audition. Now they needed their Midnight Cowboy. Many actors were interested, including - if the producers were to cleanse the movie of smut - Elvis Presley. Voight, hearing about the role through the grapevine, was desperately keen, but again Schlesinger was unconvinced. He wanted someone darker and didn't think Voight could master the requisite Texan accent. He wanted Michael Sarrazin. Hellman called Voight to let him know he was out of the picture.

Voight, considering the movie to be his big chance to impress on the world stage, was crushed. Yet still he would not accept the decision, going to visit Hoffman, who was now spending a year with the Theatre Company of Boston. Backstage one night, Hoffman recalls Voight appearing out of the shadows, towering over him and asking him to intercede with Schlesinger. It must have been hard as the last time they'd met, on the production of View From The Bridge, Voight had been the star, Hoffman the struggling thesp. Now, after The Graduate and with Midnight Cowboy sewn up, it was the diminutive Hoffman on top. Hoffman agreed to have a word.

On Hoffman's advice, Schlesinger returned to the screen tests done by Sarrazin and Voight, both acting alongside Hoffman's Rizzo. The director noted that the more he saw the Voight tapes, the more he liked them. Hoffman added that, though both actors would be impressive, when he watched the Sarrazin test he was studying himself, while watching the Voight test he could see only Voight. Yet still Sarrazin had the nod.

Voight would need a hand from fate, and got one in the shape of the industry's fabled greed. Hellman had a verbal agreement with Universal, who had Sarrazin under contract. When he called to cement the deal, they tripled the fee they'd already agreed. The liberal and film-maker-friendly United Artists would finance Midnight Cowboy, but would only commit to a very low budget. Thus Sarrazin was dropped and Voight brought in. Voight would take off down to Texas with a small tape-recorder, determined to crack the accent. Sarrazin, meanwhile, would instead film They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, a movie soon to be in direct Oscar competition with Midnight Cowboy.

By now, writer Jack Gelber had been replaced with the formerly blacklisted Waldo Salt. Salt's daughter, Jennifer, had a bit-part in the movie, playing Voight's girlfriend back in Texas. During the shoot, she'd be his girlfriend for real. Looking back, she'd recall how enthused Voight was to be there. He was, she said, massively idealistic, believing it was his duty to change the world through his acting. His problem was that American cinema, he thought, was saying nothing. He was desperate to forge an intellectual, political and spiritual connection with some great film-maker and he believed he may have found this with Midnight Cowboy. He might be to Schlesinger, he hoped, what Max Von Sydow was to Ingmar Bergman.

The film was a joy to make, a commando job often shot amidst the public without permission by a director seeing New York with fresh eyes. Voight and Hoffman would improvise often, with Waldo Salt turning their off-screen conversations into new scenes. They'd help each other through, Voight being particularly supportive when Hoffman felt unable to pull off the final sorry, hopeful scene on the bus. Their performances would also be aided by a healthy competition between them, both being aware that the other might blow them off the screen. On one occasion early in the shoot, the pair were to walk away from camera across a bridge. Still trying to perfect the character of Rizzo, Hoffman was working on his cough, working so hard that he was sick all over Voight's cowboy boots. Though he said nothing immediately, a perturbed Voight would ask Schlesinger how often they'd have to do this - he clearly believed that a deliberately scene-stealing Hoffman could projectile vomit at will.

Midnight Cowboy would receive terrible reviews. Roger Ebert was not the most dismissive when he called it "offensively trendy" and "vulgar". Yet the crowds flocked to see it, United Artists raking in over $44 million (about $200 at today's levels).There was novelty here, but also all the weirdness, poverty and energy of New York. Over time the movie would be seen as a masterpiece, a portrait of its time rammed with iconic moments. Who could forget Voight swaggering through Times Square in his fringed jacket, black cowboy hat and cool boots, his radio pressed to his ear? Or Voight rolling in fur with Brenda Vaccaro? The film would shock everyone by being named Best Picture, the first X-Rated movie to be awarded the accolade. Both Voight and Hoffman would also be Oscar-nominated and, though they'd lose out to John Wayne, this would be seen as a major turning-point, the last time the old guard would dominate the new.

So tall and so pretty, Voight was hard to cast. And, believing actors should do only responsible and meaningful work, it was hard to persuade him to take the roles he was offered. In the next five years, he made just six movies. Staying true to his word, these included Catch-22, Joseph Heller's mocking treatise on the absurdities of war, The Odessa File, where he played a German journalist chasing ex-members of the SS, and Conrack, based on the true story of Pat Conroy, a teacher of illiterate black children in South Carolina (this was directed by Martin Ritt, soon to cause a bigger political stir with the Oscar-winning Norma Rae). Well-intentioned, all of them, but none had the effect of his biggest hit of the period, 1972's Deliverance. Here, he was Ed Gentry, one of a group of "civilised" city dwellers who take a fun-trip down a Down South river, only to be tested to the limit by both environment and locals and, in one peculiarly unpleasant case, made to squeal like a pig (boy).

Aside from a role in End Of The Game, directed by his Odessa File co-star Maximillian Schell, Voight did not act throughout the mid-Seventies. This was partly because he'd married again, to the part-Iroquois Marcheline Bertrand, with whom he had two children - James Haven and Angelina (later Ms Jolie). But there were also no parts he felt to be "responsible". After Deliverance, he did try for the role of McMurphy in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, but lost to Jack Nicholson (he was offered Love Story by way of recompense, but thought it too corny). Instead, as he would all his life, he dedicated much of his time to charity work. A journalist visitor to his home would later note the posters on his wall - Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King. Voight's role models are hard to live up to, but he has tried, variously working to help drug victims in rehab, the homeless, the farmers, immigrants, the elderly, Vietnam veterans, Native Americans, the children of Chernobyl and, especially, kids in general. Often his charity work has tied in with his film work, and vice versa.

Finally, a part did come, in Coming Home. Due to his absence, Voight was no longer an A-list actor. Consequently, this role, as Luke Martin, a quadriplegic veteran who falls in love with and conducts an affair with married nurse Jane Fonda, was first offered to Bruce Dern. Then to everyone else. But everyone turned it down (too unglamorous) and Voight, who cares not for glamour, stepped in. He had actually been Fonda's first choice.

Next to the brutality and pyrotechnics of the other current Vietnam flicks, The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now, Hal Ashby's Coming Home was slow, tortured yet essentially loving. And Jon was superb, snapping up both the Oscar and Golden Globe. But immediately he slipped into crisis, all the fame and fuss making him wonder whether he was really deserving. After all, he knew there were far more important things than films - the good Catholic in him would not let him forget it. Beyond this, his marriage with Bertrand was over. So he seriously considered jacking it all in. Indeed, he recalls walking on Malibu beach one day, thinking just that, when he bumped into Al Pacino. Pacino told him outright that he was "SUCH a great actor". So he decided to continue.

Well, sort of. After Franco Zeffirelli's The Champ, a remake of the 1931 classic, where Voight played a washed-up and drunken boxer forced back into the ring to keep custody of his young son, he didn't appear again for three years (he was spending a lot of time with actress Stacey Pickren). When he did, it was with his own project, co-writing and starring in Lookin' To Get Out (featuring the young Jolie). Directed by Ashby and co-starring Ann-Margret, this involved two gamblers deep in debt, trying to redeem themselves in Las Vegas. It wasn't well received. Voight moved on to Table For Five, featuring a young Kevin Costner, where a dead woman's husband and ex-husband battle over custody of the kids, on a cruise-ship. It was a tearjerker to rival The Champ and many consider both movies to be overly schmaltzy. But, in the context of Voight's career choices, it's important to note that both films are EXTREMELY responsible in their presentation of the parents' role in a child's upbringing.

Then, suddenly, Voight threw the world a curve ball. In his movies, he'd always been the sensitive blue-eyed boy, struggling against beastliness and emotional hardship. Now, for the first time, he was bad. And HOW bad. Based on a story by Kurosawa, Runaway Train concerned a tough jailbird and his sidekick riding a brake-less freight train across Northern Canada to near-certain destruction. As Oscar "Manny" Manheim, Voight made a magnificent crazy. Totally demonic, he even out-menaced his young partner Eric Roberts. Once again, Voight was Oscar-nominated, and once again took the Golden Globe.

And, of course, once again he used his burgeoning celebrity to promote good causes. In 1986's Desert Bloom, he played an alcoholic vet, struggling to control and connect with his family, all of them living in the shadow of a nearby nuclear testing ground. There was a break during the late Eighties, while Voight spent time with his mother, diagnosed with cancer. It would kill her in the end, but not till 1995, when she'd reached the fine age of 85 (his father had died in a car accident, aged 64, back in 1973). Her illness hit Jon hard, though, and he went through a period of tough soul-searching, turning down all roles offered.

Finally, come 1989, there was Eternity, where Voight played a TV reporter leading a crusade against the evils of corporate America, only to fall for a beautiful model in the pay of a sinister media tycoon. What's worse, he thinks they may have been lovers in an earlier incarnation. It was interesting, challenging, and written by Voight. Then came the Nineties, and another anti-nuke message in Final Warning, the true story of the Chernobyl disaster. He promoted the cause of the Native Americans in The Last Of His Tribe, where he's an anthropologist who discovers the last survivor of California's Yahi tribe (he was Golden Globe nominated for this, as he had been for The Champ). And then there was yet more anti-nuke talk in Rainbow Warrior, about the environmentalists' boat sunk in New Zealand by those damned Frenchies.

Now things changed. Voight would participate in an increasing number of big-budget pictures, as he took the opportunity to have fun as well as deal in "responsible" movies. Having directed the Hans Christian Andersen adaptation Tin Soldier, he'd appear in John Singleton's fact-based Rosewood, playing a white man trying to help stop a massacre of blacks in a well-off Florida community in 1923. He'd play Robert De Niro's shady underworld contact Nate in Michael Mann's Heat and take on a series of bad guy roles. He was terrifically wicked in Mission: Impossible, The Rainmaker (another Golden Globe nomination) and Enemy Of The State, while he was weird as hell in Anaconda and U-Turn. Beyond this, he'd be the President in Pearl Harbour, he'd play his daughter Angelina's dad, Lord Croft, in Tomb Raider, and the heavyweight sports reporter Howard Cosell, opposite Will Smith in Ali, where his verbal sparring matches with Smith really made the movie. In his usual, utterly un-star-like fashion, he wore makeup that made him wholly unrecognisable, and was rightly nominated for both a Golden Globe and an Oscar.

Now clearly considered a heavyweight, Voight would receive an Emmy nomination for his role in Uprising, where he played a cold, psychotic Nazi general putting down a Jewish revolt in WW2 Warsaw. Still on TV, he'd return to sport in Second String, as a coach trying to lead the Buffalo Bills to Superbowl glory after his offensive line is struck down by food poisoning. More Voight-like would be Jasper, Texas, concerning the horrible real-life racist murder of James Byrd Jr in 1998. Voight would play the town sheriff and Louis Gossett Jr its first black mayor, forced to examine their own prejudices as they become the centre of a nationwide furore.

Voight would move on to the strange and impressive Holes, where Sigourney Weaver would run a thoroughly bizarre children's camp with dark secrets, Voight playing the frightening counsellor Mr Sir, who comes up with the classic lines "If you take a bad boy, make him dig a hole every day in the hot sun. It will turn him into a good boy". Then, having struck up a partnership with the Paul family and the Crystal Sky company (who'd earlier produced Voight's Tin Soldier and A Dog Of Flanders), he now continued his interest in children's pictures with The Karate Dog and Baby Genuises 2. In the first he'd be an evil billionaire wishing to do harm to canines on a vast scale and coming up against a ninja pooch voiced by Chevy Chase. In the second he'd be another wealthy wicked guy, this time hoping to control the minds of the world's children and being thwarted by the pesky toddlers of the title.

Far more classy would be a remake of The Manchurian Candidate, a tale of brainwashing and political intrigue where soldier Denzel Washington's hidden memories might prevent a Macchiavellian Meryl Streep from pushing son Liev Schreiber to the presidency. Voight would play a straight-laced senator, miffed by Schreiber stealing his place as prospective Vice President. Sillier, but far more profitable would be the surprise hit National Treasure, a code-cracking action movie that saw historian Nicolas Cage seek a fortune brought back from the Crusades by the Knights Templar and hidden for centuries by Freemasons, Voight popping up as Cage's disbelieving father. After this would come The Five People You Meet In Heaven, where he'd play an 83-year-old amusement park mechanic, killed trying to save a girl in a rollercoaster accident, who is reintroduced to the five people who most changed his life. They're not the people he expects, as this simple tale of love, cause and effect unfolds.

Voight's next role would see him receive a second Emmy nomination. This was in the miniseries Pope John Paul II, where he'd replace Ian Holm in the title role, playing the Pope in his later years, trying to rescue his native Poland from the Soviet Empire and revealing great emotional depth as political pressure and age begin to bend him. Following this was September Dawn, concerning the 1857 Mormon massacre of 120 settlers, the paranoid Mormons taking revenge for the recent killing of their own in Missouri. Voight would play a Mormon bishop who stirs his people up to commit the atrocity, ignoring the pleas of his own son who's formed a relationship with a girl on the doomed wagon-train.

Voight would return to Civil Rights politics with Glory Road, the true story of the first all-black college basketball team and their march to the championship in 1966. Voight would play Adolph Rupp, college coaching legend, communicating the importance of the event with his face alone as he watches his all-white team get pounded. Following this would come another wacky Crystal Sky production, The Legend Of Simon Conjurer, where a self-help guru would cure his patients of a massive range of conditions - from gambling addiction through eating disorders to sexual confusion. Voight would play the guru's enemy, a jealous psychiatrist who has him framed for murder. It was truly wacky stuff and Voight, clad in a fat-suit, fake nose and red hair, gobbling candy bars by the dozen, did not let the side down.

2007 would see Voight return to blockbusters with Transformers, playing the southern Defence Secretary attempting to find a way to halt the carnage when two warring races of robots start a pyrotechnic conflict here on Earth. He'd then move on to the thriller Pride And Glory, playing the patriarch in a family of cops torn apart when son Ed Norton must investigate his own brother in a corruption scandal. Then would come National Treasure 2 where Nicolas Cage would return to find the truth behind the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

Now nearly 70, but still highly active, we can expect Voight to continue balancing his roles between the bad boys and the good guys, between all-action blockbusters and more socially concerned material. We'll read about his triumphs and awards in the papers. What we won't hear about is the charity work he'll be doing on the side. Rest assured he'll be doing it just the same. He's one of the very few who always has. His daughter Angelina, a world-famous supporter of good causes, did not magically become concerned with the under-privileged - she picked it up from her father, Jon Voight. We should be more like him.

Dominic Wills