Jon Voight's 10 Best Movies And TV Shows

The best Jon Voight movies and TV shows include some classic acclaimed dramas as well as several big-budget blockbusters and a few guilty pleasures as well. Voight started acting in 1961 when he started taking on roles in Broadway plays. He soon made his way into movies and got an immediate starring role that made him a leading man when he took the role of a male hustler named Joe Buck in the groundbreaking Midnight Cowboy in 1969 alongside Dustin Hoffman.

That breakout performance allowed him to sign on for several big-name directors in the next decade, including Mike Nichols (Catch-22), John Boorman (Deliverance), and Hal Ashby (Coming Home). Since that time, he has become a highly decorated and respected actor. He has earned four Oscar nominations, winning for Coming Home. Voight has also earned three Emmy Award nominations and won four Golden Globes in an impressive 11 total nominations over a five-decade career.

10 Transformers (2007)

Mr. Hohn Keller

Jon Voight played a big role in the first (and in the eyes of many, the best) Transformers movie. In that film, Shia LaBeouf stars as Sam, a young man who discovers that the Transformers are on Earth, they are aliens, and they have to protect the world from the oncoming Decepticon invasion. However, Sam and his new Transformers friends face another antagonistic force. The United States government wants to control everything, including capturing the only heroes who can save the planet.

Blended image of stills from The Transformers The Movie (1986) & Bumblebee (2018)

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Jon Voight is the main face of the antagonistic U.S. government bureaucrats who hurt more than they help in movies like this. Voight is Secretary of Defense John Keller. Thankfully, he ended up fighting alongside the Autobots against the Decepticons and brought the might of the U.S. military force with him. The first Transformers movie made $709 million on a $200 million budget and even won three Oscars for its effects work. This was Voight's only Transformers movie appearance.

9 Catch-22 (1970)

1st Lieutenant Milo Minderbinder

After Jon Voight's Oscar nomination for Midnight Cowboy, but before his appearance in Deliverance, the actor teamed up with director Mike Nichols (The Graduate) for an adaptation of Joseph Heller's Catch-22. This was one of several anti-war movies that Voight appeared in to show his stance on his real-life anti-war beliefs during the era of the Vietnam War and its fallout. This specific story takes place during World War II, and it is a dark comedy surrounding a man trying to stay alive by avoiding dangerous missions.

Alan Arkin stars as the Bombardier in the adaptation, the person caught in the "Catch-22" of the title, while Jon Voight has a smaller role as the Mess Officer in the film. Catch-22 was a minor box office success, but it was a huge critical success, with an 81% fresh Rotten Tomatoes score and praise going to its terrific cast. The story was later adapted into a Hulu miniseries, which had much more time to tell the story than this two-hour film.

8 Runaway Train (1985)

Oscar 'Manny' Manheim

Released in 1985, Jon Voight joined Eric Roberts and Rebecca De Mornay in the thriller movie Runaway Train. Voight and Roberts play escaped prisoners Manny and Buck, who board a train. However, the engineer has a heart attack and dies, causing the unmanned train to begin hurling at top speed toward destruction in Alaska. Interestingly, this movie was based on a 1960s script by Akira Kurosawa, and it was also the first movie roles ever for both Tiny Lister and Danny Trejo.

Critics praised Runaway Train, awarding it an 83% fresh Rotten Tomatoes score, with praise going to the performances of Jon Voight and Eric Roberts. Despite its status as a pure action movie (with Speed as one film influenced by this release), it was also recognized by the Academy Awards. Both Voight and Roberts earned Oscar nominations, although neither won. However, both also received Golden Globe nominations, with Voight winning that award for Best Actor.

7 Ray Donovan (2013-2020)

Mickey Donovan

In 2013, Jon Voight took on a role in the Showtime television series Ray Donovan. The series is a crime drama that follows the titular character (played by Liev Schreiber), a professional "fixer" who mostly works for celebrity clients by cleaning up their messes by paying bribes and payoffs, making threats, and doing crime-scene clean-ups. However, his life is thrown out of sorts when his father, Mickey Donovan, is unexpectedly released from prison, and the FBI sets out to bring him down again.

Split image of Mickey and Ray from Ray Donovan.

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Voight plays Mickey Donovan in Ray Donovan. He spent 20 years in prison, and when he is released, he heads back to Los Angeles to get what he feels he is owed. However, his actions threaten to destroy what Ray has spent years building up in his own life. Voight won a Golden Globe Award in 2014 for his performance while earning another Golden Globe nomination in 2015 and a Primetime Emmy nomination in 2016.

6 Mission: Impossible (1996)

Jim Phelps

Mission: Impossible has become a multi-billion-dollar franchise with several great movies to its name. However, it all started with the 1996 film by director Brian De Palma. In the movie, Tom Cruise stars as Ethan Hunt, a secret ops agent framed for the murder of his own team. He has to go undercover to prove his innocence. In the first film, Jon Voight plays Jim Phelps, the rogue director of the Impossible Mission Force (IMF) who works to create a conspiracy that his superior will believe.

Jim formed the IMF but became disillusioned with the entire government system when he believed he was no longer necessary despite defending the country for over four decades. His plan was to sell the IMF information to an arms dealer and frame the rookie member, Ethan Hunt. It was a villain role for Voight and one that he did great at, although the original cast of the TV show hated the fact that the movie made the beloved character evil (via CNN).

5 Ali (2001)

Howard Cosell

Will Smith impressed critics when he played Muhammad Ali in 2001. In Ali, Smith played the all-time boxing great from his early days as Cassius Clay to his rise to the top of the boxing world and his controversial political and social stances in the 1960s and 1970s, when he changed his name and refused to fight in the Vietnam War. As for Jon Voight, he had a supporting role as someone on the periphery of the Muhammad Ali world - sportscaster Howard Cosell.

Alionly received two Oscar nominations, but both were for acting - Will Smith and Jon Voight.

For those unfamiliar, Howard Cosell was one of the most influential sports broadcasters in the world, working for ABC Sports from 1953 until 1985. He was a true entertainer who was just as famous and popular as the athletes that he covered. He became known for his early support of Black athletes, and he was there to back Ali when the boxer refused to fight in the war. Alionly received two Oscar nominations, but both were for acting - Will Smith and Jon Voight.

4 Deliverance (1972)

Ed Gentry

Jon Voight was part of the impressive cast of the horror thriller Deliverance in 1972. The movie stars Burt Reynolds in the lead role as Lewis, who goes on a canoeing trip with three friends in the Georgia wilderness. However, after insulting some locals before heading out, they find their lives in danger as some backwoods people in the mountains begin to stalk them, turning the trip into a horrific experience. Between the Dueling Banjos theme song and the sexual assault of Ned Beatty's Bobby, it remains a horror classic.

Jon Voight plays one of the four friends, Ed, and while Reynolds is remembered as the main star, it was Voight's Ed who was the main protagonist of the film, which sees the attack by the men in the mountains to be the catalyst for their own descent into horror. Deliverance received three Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director, while Voight earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama.

3 Heat (1995)

Nate

In 1995, Michael Mann directed the crime thriller Heat. The biggest praise for the cast in this film was the first-time team-up of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. While the two were both in The Godfather Part II, they were in different eras and never shared the screen together. This time, De Niro was a criminal mastermind (Neil McCauley) while Pacino was the detective (Vincent Hanna) dead-set on bringing him in. Also in the cast was Val Kilmer as one of the criminals, stealing every scene in which he appeared.

Often forgotten among the ensemble supporting cast (including Ashley Judd and Tom Sizemore) was Jon Voight, who played Nate (Neil's fence), someone Neil trusts but is unable to help his friend escape his date with destiny. Heat was not only a box office success but also had a lasting reputation as one of the best crime thrillers ever made, and the shootout remains a highlight of any crime film in history.

2 Coming Home (1978)

Luke Martin

While Jon Voight earned an Oscar nomination for his third-ever movie role of his career (Midnight Cowboy), it took nine years to get another Oscar nomination, and this time, he won it for his role in the romantic war drama Coming Home. Directed by Hal Ashby, Coming Home stars Jane Fonda as Sally Hyde, a woman who starts a romantic relationship with a paraplegic Vietnam War veteran named Luke Martin (Voight) while her own husband Bob (Bruce Dern) is currently serving in Vietnam.

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Voight was a huge hit in the movie. He won Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival when the project premiered, and then he went on a roll, winning many other awards. Voight and Fonda won Oscars for their roles in Coming Home, which was also nominated for Best Picture and Best Director, garnering eight total nominations. Voight and Fonda also both won Golden Globe Awards, and the National Board of Review named Voight Best Actor of the year.

1 Midnight Cowboy (1969)

Joe Buck

Easily, the most important Jon Voight movie of his career was the one that made him a star. In 1969, Voight teamed up with Dustin Hoffman in the John Schlesinger movie Midnight Cowboy. Voight stars as Joe Buck, a naive man who moves from Texas to New York City and becomes a male sex worker. He then becomes friends with a cynical con man named Ratso Rizzo (Hoffman). The film was far ahead of its time, depicting the gritty realities in New York City surrounding a gay sex worker.

Midnight Cowboy also holds the distinction of being the first X-rated movie towin the Oscar for Best Picture (although the rating was later changed to R). The film received a total of seven Oscar nominations, also winning Best Director and Best Screenplay, while Hoffman, Jon Voight, and Sylvia Miles all earned nominations for their performances in the movie. The Library of Congress added the film to the National Film Registry in 1994 for preservation.

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