Introduction
As long as there has been Hollywood, there have been Hollywood feuds. Instances when those behind, in front of the camera, or both, simply could not agree to disagree. A town of tinsel and egos. It is no surprise that not every personality gels. It is a place of work and industry. Have you liked every single colleague you have ever worked with? Often the drama behind the scenes can enhance what appears onscreen and sometimes even overshadow it. After all, there’s no such thing as ‘Bad Press.’
We as an audience love a good Hollywood Feud. It equates to our natural habit of ‘gossiping’ about our work colleagues. Whispering about our schoolmates behind their backs. We as a species and as an audience thrive on schadenfreude. That is the pleasure that is derived from another person’s misfortune.
Over a series of deep dives and retrospectives, Cinema Scholars continues to take a jump into the ring and reveal the root causes of some of the sublime to ridiculous Hollywood Feuds. Who was involved? How did it start? Did it affect the end product? Did it ever end? This latest feud involves two Academy Award Winners who are also father and daughter, welcome to our first Hollywood Family Feud.
Jon Voight and Angelina Jolie
Root and Recent Causes
Jolie and her father have had a tense relationship for most of her life. Voight has also confessed that his infidelity while married to Jolie’s mother, actress Marcheline Bertrand, and subsequent divorce when Jolie was five years old, was a driving force behind the bitterness that has resurfaced over the years.
Jolie penned a piece for The New York Times in 2020 for Mother’s Day, in honor of her late mother where she touched on her parents’ divorce. Jolie admitted that it was one of the reasons that led to her and her father’s difficult relationship. Voight also blames the divorce for, what he refers to as Jolie’s ‘mental health issues’ following her divorce from husband Billy Bob Thornton in 2003.
Speaking with Entertainment Weekly in 2002, Voight also claimed his daughter was ‘never normal’ and said it was due to how he behaved in his marriage to Marcheline Bertrand. He went on, further saying that he:
“never had the feeling’ Jolie and Thornton’s marriage would last because of ‘both of their serious problems”
Voight then claimed Jolie had refused to speak to him and even went on to legally remove ‘Voight’ as her surname in favor of her middle name Jolie – which she had long used as her stage name – a little over a month after the Entertainment Weekly interview.
Coming to a Head
“I will only say that, like every child, [brother] Jamie and I would have loved to have had a warm and loving relationship with our dad”
Then in 2007, came Voight’s latest response by sharing why he believed his children didn’t want him in their lives. In an interview with People, Voight stated:
“I find it very heartbreaking that my children want to paint a bad portrait of me…I feel that it comes from their inability to let go of years of programmed anger from their mother who understandably felt quite hurt when we divorced”
Reconciliation
“That one moment changed my whole life. It gave me back my daughter and my family. Being reunited with my Angie is very precious to me”
“He’s been very good at understanding they needed their grandfather at this time…I had to do a therapy meeting last night and he was just around. He knows kind of the rule – don’t make them play with you…Just be a cool grandpa who’s creative, and hang out and tell stories and read a book in the library”
“Jon and I have gotten to know each other – through grandchildren now, and we’re finding a new relationship”
“a very invested mom…she’s on it with these kids. She gives them love every second of their day”
“She loves her kids, she’s always involved with them, always concerned for them”
Cracks Opening
Due to differences in politics and belief systems, Voight blasted his daughter for her anti-Israeli comments. This after Jolie slammed the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for ‘deliberately’ killing children in Gaza airstrikes. Voight, who renounced his liberal views of the 1960s and 1970s and has since become a vocal supporter of the Republican Party, called for Jolie to reassess her opinion on Israel’s role in the war.
“What happened in Israel is an act of terror. But that cannot justify the innocent lives lost in bombing a civilian population in Gaza that has nowhere to go, no access to food or water, no possibility of evacuation, and not even the basic human right to cross a border or seek refuge…Because of my work with refugees for 20 years, my focus is on the people displaced by violence in any context”
Conclusion
We can only hope these pair of Academy Award winners can put their politics aside and return to their personal roles of mother and grandfather, respectively, to six innocent children. Both are still working Hollywood actors, let’s look forward to yet another reconciliation and who knows, another onscreen pairing.
