Born 1938 in Yonkers, New York, American actor Jon Voight had his film debut in Philip Kaufman's crimefighter spoof, Fearless Frank, in 1967. He came to prominence in the late 1960s with his Oscar-nominated performance as Joe Buck, a would-be gigolo in Midnight Cowboy (1969).

During the 1970s, Voight 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 remake of The Champ (1979).

His output became sparse during the 1980s and early 1990s, although he 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).

Voight made a comeback in Hollywood during the mid-1990s, starring in Michael Mann's crime epic Heat (1995), portrayed Jim Phelps in Mission: Impossible (1996), a corrupt NSA agent in Enemy of the State (1998), and the unscrupulous attorney Leo F. Drummond in Francis Ford Coppola's The Rainmaker (1997), which earned him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Voight also appears in Showtime's Ray Donovan TV series, now in its seventh season as Mickey Donovan, a role that brought him newfound critical and audience acclaim and his fourth Golden Globe win in 2014.

In 2019, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Donald Trump.

Take a look at these vintage photos to see portrait of young Jon Voight in the late 1960s and 1970s.






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