Aspiring young actors in New York in the 1960s came in many shapes and psyches. There were angry ones and cynical ones and sincere ones and intense ones. But there weren’t many joyful ones. The road was too hard and it was strewn with failure. “No one starts at the top in the theater,” Gene Hackman once said, “and the bottom is a very ugly place.”
Jon Voight was an exception. He was driven, compulsive and uneasy. But he also loved his work and his fellow actors, and he was confident that if he pushed himself hard enough and got a break or two along the way, he would succeed.