Jon Voight life and biography

Jon Voight is an American actor. He has received an Academy Award, out of four nominations, and three Golden Globe Awards, out of nine nominations. Voight is the father of actress Angelina Jolie.

Voight came to prominence in the late 1960s with his performance as a would-be gigolo in Midnight Cowboy (1969). During the 1970s, he became a Hollywood star with his portrayals of a businessman mixed up with murder in Deliverance (1972), a paraplegic Vietnam veteran in Coming Home (1978), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor, and a penniless ex-boxing champion in The Champ (1979).

Although his output slowed during the 1980s, Voight received critical acclaim for his performance as a ruthless bank robber in Runaway Train (1985). During the 1990s, he most notably starred as an unscrupulous showman attorney in The Rainmaker (1997). Voight gave critically acclaimed biographical performances during the 2000s, appearing as sportscaster Howard Cosell in Ali (2001), as Nazi officer Jürgen Stroop in Uprising (2001), and as Pope John Paul II in the television film of the same name (2005).

Voight was born in Yonkers, New York, the son of Barbara (née Kamp; January 7, 1910-December 3, 1995) and Elmer Voight (October 29, 1909-June 1973), a professional golfer. He has two brothers, Barry Voight (born 1937), a former volcanologist at Pennsylvania State University, and Wesley Voight (born 1940), known as Chip Taylor, a singer-songwriter who penned "Wild Thing" and "Angel of the Morning". Voight's paternal grandfather, George Voytka, was a Slovak immigrant from Ko'ice, then under Austro-Hungarian rule, while his maternal grandfather, Joseph Kamp, as well as his maternal grandmother's parents, were immigrants from Germany.

Voight was raised 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. 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. in 1960. After graduation, Voight moved to New York City, where he pursued an acting career.

In 1962, Voight married actress Lauri Peters, whom he met when they both appeared in a production of The Sound of Music. They divorced in 1967 after five years of marriage. He remarried on December 12, 1971 to actress Marcheline Bertrand. They had a son, James Haven (born 1973), and a daughter, Angelina Jolie (born 1975). They separated in 1976, filed for divorce in 1978, and divorced in 1980. Both their children would go on to enter the film business, Haven as an actor and writer, and Jolie as a movie star in her own right.

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