Jon Voight from Midnight Cowboy to Ray Donovan

Published by Interrobang Staff at September 1, 2013

Jon Voight is famous for his many legendary film roles– Ed in “Deliverance” , Luke Martin in “Coming Home” and of course, Joe Buck in “Midnight Cowboy” just to name a few. He recently stopped by the SiriusXM studios to talk with Ron Bennington about joining the cast of the critically acclaimed Showtime series, “Ray Donovan.” Excerpts of the interview appear below. You can hear the interview in its entirety exclusively on SiriusXM satellite radio.

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Ron Bennington: This show is so intense and your character Mickey has got to be one of the biggest bastards in the history of TV. Just an amazing complicated character. And I’m always curious about a guy like that. Does he have love for his family?

Jon Voight: Oh yeah. He does.

Ron Bennington: But the chaos that he brings to everybody.

Jon Voight: Well, you know people like that, don’t you? They’re crazy about you, but they’re the worst medicine for you. They just get everything messed up. But they love you, for sure, true.

Ron Bennington: And that’s the strange thing about family. It’s the people that we probably fight the most with, the people that we argue with, the people that we judge the harshest and yet, the people that we’re most drawn to.

Jon Voight: Yeah. Well, I mean it’s interesting about family. Family is always crazy, isn’t it? You don’t get that close or involved with other people. You’re not tied to other people the way you’re tied to family. And it’s positive and negative sometimes.

Ron Bennington: Oh absolutely, because there’s such history. But at the same time, these are the people that would, without a thought, hide you from the cops.

Jon Voight: Exactly right. Exactly right! Now you’re talking my language Ronnie.

Ron Bennington: These are the people that would go out of their way to say – look, I don’t know what you did. We’re going to stash you in the attic for awhile. We’ll figure it out later.

Jon Voight: That’s what you would think. That’s what Mickey thinks. So what happened to my family? What happened to you, Ray? Where were you when I needed you? When you sent me to prison for 20 years. (laughs)

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Jon Voight Talks About Liev Schreiber

Ron Bennington: Liev’s amazing in this too.

Jon Voight: Isn’t he wonderful?

Ron Bennington: Yeah. He’s one of those guys that you see him in one role and he’s like the most sensitive guy in the world and then, just the change of a look and he looks like a stone cold killer.

Jon Voight: Well, he’s got a great range as you say. And he’s a terrific stage actor. He’s got real chops, this guy. He’s got an unusual voice as well. He’s done all these documentaries and stuff like that because of the power of his voice. So, he has all these gifts. And I watched him for years and I said – this guy really needs to be a leading man. He’s a leading man and he’s trying to dumb himself down when he plays with these other leading men. But now, he’s the number one on our call sheet and he’s the lead in this piece. And he’s allowed to be sexy and he’s allowed to be smart as hell and he’s allowed to be dangerous and he’s allowed to be humorous. All the aspects of this wonderful gifted personality, he can bring to play now. And people are going crazy for it. They love it. Also, he’s a very virile…we haven’t had a virile…a guy – he’s a guy. He’s a man. When Ann Biderman who is the show runner and the creator of this piece, was asked a question about why she chose Liev, she said – because he’s a man. That doesn’t mean he’s the only guy that’s running around today, but there’s something very appealing about him in the old way. He’s like the Bogart or like the Robert Mitchum or whatever is.

Ron Bennington: Yeah, it’s kind of a rare thing today, but it’s always strange that it takes some people so long before that is recognized – that you’ve always had to do it once before you get the opportunity to do it again.

Jon Voight: I think that’s true. I think that’s true. He’s not normally classic good looking, but he’s good looking. He’s attractive. He’s an attractive guy. But just, he was able to do these other things. He’s a very good character actor. He can do this and that. He’s versatile. And he just hasn’t broken through in that kind of role. And this is it, boy. Now people know what he can do and they like him.

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Jon Voight Talks About His Early Influences

Ron Bennington: Who did you grow up watching? What took you into acting?

Jon Voight: Well, my dad was a golf professional. But he loved movies and on his day off which was Mondays, he liked to relax and he liked to take us three boys – I was the middle of three kids, boys, and he liked to take us to the movies. And that’s what we did. At an early age when I was 4, maybe 5 – we were going to the movies. And we fell in love with movies. I think the guys that I grew up with…I was guided by my dad. Dad loved Spencer Tracy. And there couldn’t be a better example of a great actor than Spencer Tracy. And then I saw all these guys you mentioned. I saw Cagney and Bogart and of course, Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant and Gary Cooper – all of these great ones. They all were great, really great. So, I grew up in a time when there were great actors. And I fell in love with the movies.

Ron Bennington: And that was all the studio system and then by the time you had come along, that studio system had pretty much fallen apart. And you were, I guess at that point, acting pretty much out there on your own.

Jon Voight: At that time, I think things had gotten a little stale. I don’t want to give anybody the idea that I’m a historian or anything like that, but I remember the emotions of the time. I remember that the studio system kind of broke down because the great moguls died. And there was nothing to replace that energy. That energy was such an authentic energy. Those guys created Hollywood, really in a way. And then, who replaced them were good people who were trying to be like them and they tried to do things like them. So, they looked for the talent available to them and they tried to imitate…they tried to get the next Cary Grant, the next Gary Cooper, the next Jimmy Cagney. And they got a little stale. That’s the way I saw it anyway. And then, when the ’60s happened, everything was turned upside down. There was a lot of good turning upside down and a lot of bad turning upside down. The ’60s was a very destructive era as well. But one of the things that was happening at that time with me, was – I was looking at films from all over the world then. I looked at Kurosawa’s films. I looked at Bergman’s films and Fellini’s films and all the French new wave guys. And it was a very exciting time. And I was looking for the American people that were going to be in that realm. So, I had my own thoughts about what we should be doing. And I was just an actor looking for a job in the streets, but I had big dreams, I guess. And I was looking for my Bergman or my Fellini. And I fortunately found John Schlesinger, this British director who directed “Darling” and won an Academy Award for that. And then, I found my way, which was a big adventure, but finally finding my way to that role and I became part of the movie industry too.

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Jon Voight Talks About Working With Dustin Hoffman on “Midnight Cowboy”

Ron Bennington: That connection that you had with Dustin Hoffman in “Midnight Cowboy” – and that’s something that I think marks you Jon, that there’s always that other person that you are playing off of. Sometimes we look at actors and it’s like they’re alone, but you’re always connected very strongly with somebody on screen.

Jon Voight: Yeah. That’s interesting. When you think of Humphrey Bogart, you do think of a kind of…but you look at his films and you always have that partner. Like “Casablanca”, you had Ingrid Bergman of course. With Tracy, sometimes Clark Gable, sometimes he had Katharine Hepburn. He was good at pairing as well. But they stood alone. But that’s true. In my career, I’ve had these serious relationships with the other actors. Starting out with Dusty, where it was a two-hander. And when we started out, I said to Dusty – this is like Abbot and Costello. They play off each other. And these guys are like that. It’s classic. It’s like Sancho Panza and Don Quixote or something.

Ron Bennington: Yeah. That’s it exactly.

Jon Voight: And so, we always felt like that. And when we were working on it, Dusty and I did a lot of improvisations at lunch hour. We stayed in character and we had the fun of it to keep our characters alive and to experiment with things. But it was like we knew what the other one was thinking. We were one of those people that if it had been the old studio system, they would have written a lot of scripts for the two of us.

Ron Bennington: And you were free to walk around New York in character without anybody knowing who you guys were at that time. Well of course, Dustin had already done a film, but nobody recognized him as Ratzo Rizzo. I mean he just disappeared into that role.

Jon Voight: Yeah, absolutely.

Ron Bennington: Some of those even street scenes, people didn’t know you were shooting a movie, correct?

Jon Voight: Right. We were on the street with the hidden cameras across the street in the window and stuff like that.

Ron Bennington: Wow. So, that “I’m walkin’ here” – nobody knows.

Jon Voight: That line has been talked about. My recollection about “I’m walkin’ here” is very specific. It was on 6th Avenue. We were coming in toward the park, last block toward the park. The traffic had to be held up, so we could walk down the street. And the camera was way up the other side. It was a long focus lens. We had rehearsed it a couple of times. But then, they stopped the traffic and Dusty and I were always of thinking of the improvisation – always having something in our pocket. That’s the way we naturally worked. For some reason, both of us. Especially with those roles, I guess. So, all of a sudden, we walk down the street and this cab driver had been waiting a long time and he finally got fed up. And he said – I’m coming through. And Dusty stepped right in front of him and hit that thing – Holy God. I mean we almost got hit in that thing. And then, Dusty says his line – “I’m walkin’ here! I’m walkin’ here!”. And then he says the line about “It’s not a bad way to pick up insurance”. Whatever it is like that. He had that line in his pocket. Both lines. We were talking about something else. And we kept the take going to finish the scene out the way it had been constructed. And all I was thinking about when that happened, I was saying – stay in character. This is the take. This is the take. Don’t cut. Don’t. I’m thinking in my head – don’t cut it John! Don’t cut it! This is it! And sure enough, it wound up in the movie and everybody knows that line.

Ron Bennington: It’s amazing. Those little accidents though, right? That make films.

Jon Voight: Oh yeah.

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Jon Voight Talks About His Character Mickey Donovan on “Ray Donovan”

Ron Bennington: In this role, when you play Mickey, you’re like – yeah, I could do this for a long time. I’ve got a lot of places to go with it?

Jon Voight: Yeah. Mickey is a very…he’s an original character. I’ve never seen anything like this guy come along ever. And people are responding to that, so yeah. He can do anything. You can see Mickey doing anything. And he’s a good character for me. I’ve found…in the very beginning, I didn’t which way I was going to go with it and all with this. But it seems to be very comfortable with me. I think I can do anything with this guy.

Ron Bennington: Well, I think what’s great about it is you know here this guy, at this point in his life which is a grandfather age, but he’s still somewhat ruled by some things that happened to him at a very early age. Where he was taught, this is what you’ve got to do to be strong. This is what you have to do to survive. And he’s repeating those mistakes or life lessons or whatever you want to call them and spreading them out. It’s almost whatever happened there….

Jon Voight: He’s says – I’m a wise man. I learned a lot in can. Oh yeah, great. What did you learn in the can? (laughs) He had a bad childhood, he learned a lot there. Then he learned a lot in the can. He wants to spread it around.

Ron Bennington: But he is a survivor.

Jon Voight: That’s right.

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Ron Bennington: Jon Voight, what a pleasure to have you stop by, my friend.

Jon Voight: Thanks very much.

Ron Bennington: I’ll see you next time coming through.

Jon Voight: Thanks Ron.

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