Jon Voight
American actor (born 1938)
- Born December 29, 1938
- 16 movies
Jon Voight is an American actor, born on 29 December 1938 in Yonkers, New York. After a Broadway debut in The Sound of Music, he broke through as the hustler Joe Buck in Midnight Cowboy (1969), earning his first Oscar nomination, and starred in Deliverance (1972). He won the Academy Award for Best Actor, and the Cannes acting prize, for Coming Home (1978), and earned further nominations for Runaway Train (1985) and Ali (2001). His four Golden Globes include one for the series Ray Donovan.
Jon Voight appears in 16 films in The Rerun, from 1969 to 2024. Most of that work is in action, drama and adventure. Frequent collaborators in The Rerun: Michael Bay (3), Shia LaBeouf (2), Ben Stiller (2), Tom Cruise (2), William Fichtner (2).
Known for
- Midnight Cowboy (1969). An Academy Award-nominated performance as Joe Buck.
- Deliverance (1972). A 1972 film among his other notable work.
- Coming Home (1978). The film for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor.
- Heat (1995). A 1995 film credit from his later career.
- Enemy of the State (1998). A 1998 film credit from his later career.
Career
Voight’s 1970s run is the core of his reputation: the naive Texan in John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy, the canoeing businessman opposite Burt Reynolds in John Boorman’s Deliverance, the paraplegic veteran Luke Martin in Hal Ashby’s Coming Home, and the washed-up boxer in The Champ (1979). As the escaped convict in Runaway Train he won a Golden Globe and another Oscar nomination.
From the mid-1990s he became a high-end supporting player: the fence Nate in Michael Mann’s Heat (1995), the spymaster Jim Phelps in Mission: Impossible (1996), the NSA villain in Enemy of the State (1998) and Howard Cosell in Mann’s Ali, a fourth Oscar nomination. On television he played the patriarch Mickey Donovan in Ray Donovan, winning the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor in 2014, and he appeared in Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis (2024).
Where to start
- Midnight Cowboy (1969): the breakthrough, and still among his most affecting work.
- Coming Home (1978): his Oscar-winning performance.
- Deliverance (1972): a survival thriller that holds up.
- Heat (1995): a small, precise part in a crime saga.
Movies
Quick answers
- What movies and TV shows has Jon Voight been in?
- Jon Voight appears in Megalopolis (2024), Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016), Tropic Thunder (2008), Transformers (2007), Pearl Harbor (2001), Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), Enemy of the State (1998), Anaconda (1997), Mission: Impossible (1996), Heat (1995), Runaway Train (1985) and The Champ (1979) on The Remote.
- When was Jon Voight born?
- Jon Voight was born on 29 December 1938.
Before you go