TORONTO – Much has been written about Hollywood icon Jon Voight, but don’t expect to find him searching his own name on Google.
“I’m not interested in what other people say about me,” he says. “I know too much more than they do to be worried about that.”
Voight, 73, knows he’s recognized everywhere he goes. “I’ve come to accept it,” he admits, in an interview following an appearance on Global Toronto’s The Morning Show.
“In the beginning I questioned the attention. I kind of deflected it. Now I welcome it because I know it can put a smile on people’s faces. It’s a way of sharing some laughter and love.”
The winner of an Oscar for his role in 1978’s Coming Home, Voight says it’s “a big blessing” to have some celebrity. “It can be a very nice thing and of course it can also be used for a lot of good.”
With films spanning five decades, Voight is well-known to different generations of movie-goers. They range from classics like Midnight Cowboy and Deliverance to blockbusters like Pearl Harbour and Transformers.
“I’m so glad I did certain movies,” he says. “Certainly the National Treasure movies have been good for lots of age groups, and movies like Holes affected a lot of young people. Even a couple of silly movies I did – Baby Geniuses and stuff like that – the little kids got to know me.”
They’re also the kind of movies Voight’s grandchildren (he has six thanks to daughter Angelina Jolie and her partner Brad Pitt) can watch. “My grandchildren are interesting characters,” says Voight. “They know me. They don’t know me through my films; they know me as me. We do a lot of laughing.”
While he may not Google himself, Voight does enjoy watching his own films.
“It’s not always thrilling,” admits the star. “Sometimes it’s very humbling to look at my work.”
Of all the movies he’s done, Voight admits his favorite is 1985’s Runaway Train, in which he plays a convict trapped on a train with no brakes.
“It is always impressive to me when I see that performance. It’s a very good performance. The film itself is brilliantly made,” he says. “I look at that and I’m very proud of it.”
And just like that runaway train, Voight shows no sign of slowing down. “Films still have a great magic for me. The magic I had when I was young and I used to go to films with my dad and brothers is still with me.”
Voight says those films – the films of the late ‘40s – are Hollywood’s best. “They set a very high watermark. In some ways we may have lost a skip or two along the way,” he says, “but hopefully we’ll get back to that as long as we have those as a compass.”
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