Jon Voight Turns 88 on December 29, From Midnight Cowboy to an Oscar for Coming Home

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Jon Voight turns 88 on December 29. He was born in Yonkers, New York, in 1938, and he began his career on stage before moving into films in the 1960s.

Photo: Alan Light, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Midnight Cowboy (1969) earned him his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, as Joe Buck, a young Texan who moves to New York to make his fortune.

Photo: Romain Brami, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Deliverance (1972), directed by John Boorman, showed his physical side as one of four friends on a canoe trip. Coming Home (1978) brought him the Academy Award for Best Actor, playing a Vietnam veteran who returns home paralysed.

Photo: Angela George, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

He was Jim Phelps in Mission: Impossible (1996) and later starred in the television drama Ray Donovan. He is the father of the actress Angelina Jolie.

Film still: United Artists, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Which of his roles do you remember best, Joe Buck, Luke Martin or Jim Phelps?