The Midnight Cowboy Jon Voight turns 85
The actor, who’s also the father of Angelina Jolie, played several memorable roles throughout his career but his signature role and the best remembered may be that one of Joe Buck in the 1969 classic “Midnight Cowboy”
The Midnight Cowboy Jon Voight turns 85
Born on December 29, 1938, the Academy Awarded actor Jon Voight, who is also the father of actress Angelina Jolie,came to prominence in 1969 with his Oscar nominated performance as Joe Buck, the naive country boy who moves to New York City intending to be a women gigolo and cross paths with the homeless Rats (Dustin Hoffman). Buck ends up becoming also a gay hustler in order to gather money faster so he can take Ratso, who is sick, to the Florida sun. It is Jon Voight’s signature role, and the movie itself, became the only movie winning the Academy Award for the Best Picture due to it’s “X” rating. Both Voight and co-star Hoffman were nominated for Best Actor, but lost out to John Wayne in True Grit. Throughout the 1970’s Jon Voight became a popular Hollywood star enrolling in several of the decade’s best movies,receiving the Academy Award for best actor Academy Award for his role of a Vietnam paraplegic veteran in the 1978 film “Coming Home”. The 1980’s weren’t the best in the actor’s career, his last hit was the 1979 “The Champ”. With his career mostly going mild during the 1980’s he still won the Golden Globe and was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance as the ruthless bank robber Oscar “Manny” Manheim in Runaway Train (1985). The actor’s big comeback was during the 1990’s where among other films, appeared in the blockbuster “Heat” (1995) and “Mission: Impossible” (1996). Politically outspoken, but also politically controversial, he endorsed Donald Trump for president in 2016, and in 2019 released a short two-part video on Twitter supporting President Trump’s policies, and calling him “the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln”, a contrast from his early years, when he was a liberal/democrat who supported JFK, only becoming a republican later in his life. On a curious note, Jon Voight who was raised as a Catholic, is also the father of another actor, James Haven and brother of Chip Taylor, the singer-songwriter that wrote the 1960’s hits “Wild Thing”, first recorded by Jordan Christopher & the Wild Ones and later achieving worldwide success with the best known version of the song by the British Invasion band The Troggs. More recently, Jon Voight also appears in Showtime’s Ray Donovan TV series, as Mickey Donovan, a role that brought him newfound critical and audience acclaim and his fourth Golden Globe win in 2014. He turns 85 today.
Look back at the famous opening sequence of the movie Midnight Cowboy, 1969, Jon Voight’s breakthrough role
Watch the official movie trailer for Midnight Cowboy, 1969 featuring Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman
Also watch Jon Voight receiving the Academy Award for Best Actor presented to him by Diana Ross and Ginger Rogers ,in 1979 for the movie Coming Home,
Watch more movies related videos
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