Jon Voight: Unlikely to Be Grandfather of the Year

Jon Voight is a master of his craft, and an Academy Award winning actor. But after his antics on the red carpet at a recent awards show, Voight isn’t about to win any awards in parenting or grand-parenting.

It is no secret that Voight and daughter Angelina Jolie are not on speaking terms. The source of the initial estrangement is said to have been Voight’s infidelity when he was married to Angelina Jolie's mother, and his subsequent abandonment of the family. Though Jon Voight's career was successful, garnering him an Oscar and several nominations, Angelina's childhood was marked by financial struggle.

And boy, can Angelina hold a grudge.

In some ways, her meteoric rise to fame seems like one long and uninterrupted act of rebellion against her father. When Angelina Jolie won her own Academy Award for her stunning work in Girl, Interrupted, she was publicly gracious about her father’s role in her life. But she later told James Lipton during an Actor’s Studio interview that she didn’t keep her Oscar; she gave it to her mother.

Whereas Voight is an artist’s actor, carefully considering each role, and worrying deeply about the integrity of each script, Angelina treats her movie career with flippancy. She talks about acting as if it were just something she does to make enough money to fund her philanthropic interests. For Angelina, it seems making movies is just a job, and living well is the best revenge.

The message to her father isn’t subtle: I’m younger than you, richer than you, more famous than you, a better actor than you, and I barely have to try.

For a time, the relationship between Voight and Jolie seemed to get better. The two of them even starred together in Lara Croft: Tomb Raiders. And the father and daughter had nothing but glowing praise for one another while promoting the film.
But soon afterwards, Voight began making unflattering public statements about his daughter to the media, including a humiliating public plea that she "get help" for "her mental problems."