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ton, D.C., and after graduation he moved to New York City to pursue an acting career. His fi rst big break came in a recurring


role in Gunsmoke in the mid-1960s. It would be followed by other TV roles, and eventu- ally an extraordinary career in cinema. Voight’s career breakthrough came in


the Oscar-winning fi lm Midnight Cowboy, where he played gigolo Joe Buck to Dustin Hoff man’s shyster role as Ratso Rizzo. He received an Academy Award nomination for best actor, but the Oscar that year went to sentimental favorite John Wayne for his performance in True Grit. A series of iconic fi lms followed for


Voight, including Deliverance, The Champ, and Coming Home, the picture that earned him his Oscar for best actor. In Coming Home, Voight played Luke Martin, a para- plegic Vietnam veteran who falls in love with a character played by Jane Fonda. But amid Hollywood’s bright lights and


red carpets, the spiritual dimension of his life wasn’t keeping pace with his profession- al accolades. As Voight tells the story, “I was raised Catholic . . . but I went away from it a little bit, and I wasn’t focused on it. I was focused on a career in acting at one point.” It was during this time that Voight looked for all the world like a classic Hollywood lib-


68 NEWSMAX | NOVEMBER 2022


DANGER Voight has been a frequent visitor to Israel, including this trip in 2008 when he inspected the damage caused by a rocket fired by Palestinian militants from the Gaza Strip. He also talked to children about what it’s like living under the constant threat of war.


eral. He supported President John F. Ken- nedy — whose views would likely be can- celed in today’s Democratic Party — and participated in voter registration drives for George McGovern in Los Angeles’ inner- city neighborhoods. At one point he even voiced support for a leftist group in Chile. He would later remark, “I was caught up


in the hysteria during the Vietnam era.” He blamed “Marxist propaganda” for fueling the anti-war protests, and blamed radicals for ceding the confl ict to communists who brought “the killing fi elds and slaughter[ed] 2.5 million people in Cambodia and South Vietnam.” Voight’s outlook began to change after


he began feeding his spiritual curiosity by reading both the Hebrew Tanakh and Chris- tian Bible. As a lifelong storyteller, the more Voight studied the awe-inspiring biblical narratives underpinning the Judeo-Chris- tian ethic, the more alarmed he became that Western civilization and American culture had gone seriously astray. The stark shift in Voight’s political views


emerged fully in 2008, just as mainstream Hollywood fi gures were embracing the


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