How Jon Voight Landed His Big Break in ‘Midnight Cowboy’ (Guest Blog)
Voight wasn’t the first choice to play the role of a male hustler opposite Dustin Hoffman, recounts writer Glenn Frankel
Glenn Frankel
Guest Writer
Last Updated: March 15, 2021 @ 2:58 PM
Photo: Getty Images
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.”