Interview of the Week: Jon Voight

NEW YORK, Jan. 3 (UPI) -- Oscar-winning actor Jon Voight raised eyebrows at a New York press conference recently when he declared "Ali" a better boxing movie than the cinematic sacred cow "Raging Bull."

"This is the best boxing film, in terms of the sheer boxing of it -- and hopefully, more than that -- that has ever been made. It's better than 'Raging Bull.' Much better than 'Raging Bull,'" said Voight, who earned a Golden Globe Award nomination for his spot-on portrayal of sports announcer Howard Cosell in "Ali," which stars Will Smith as the titular boxer, Muhammad Ali.

"Raging Bull" was the movie that cemented Robert DeNiro's star status.

"('Ali') is better than 'Raging Bull' from the boxing standpoint, no question about it. The boxing in 'Raging Bull' is not very good. In terms of the authenticity of the boxing, it isn't very good at all. It isn't a big thing to say, really. This stuff (in 'Ali') is very remarkable. I don't want to get into a big battle of films because, of course, 'Raging Bull' was an extraordinary artistic event," continued the 64-year-old Yonkers, N.Y., native.

Worth noting is the fact that "Ali" is the third boxing movie Voight has starred in during his almost four decade-long career. The star of "Midnight Cowboy" and "Deliverance" first played a fighter in 1971 in the film "All American Boy" then returned to the ring in 1979 to play a champion boxer-turned-horse trainer in "The Champ," earning an Oscar nomination for his performance.

"I don't necessarily like the ramifications of people beating each other up or hurting each other," Voight explained. "It doesn't take a genius to figure out that's not so good, but some people have made an art out of it ... It's amazing stuff. It's a skill that requires timing and the full athletic aspect of it."

He went on to say he likes working in sports movies like "Ali" and the recent teen football movie "Varsity Blues," in which he played a coach, because "there's a lot of drama in athletics."

"It's the highest drama ... And boxing is so basic, isn't it?" he pondered. "It's the bottom line. A man just giving what he's got against another man and if it's done with skill, it becomes art. If it becomes something else, at least it has a lot to do with courage."

Asked what it was like to play legendary sports commentator Cosell in "Ali," Voight said it was an interesting experience to portray someone he listened to and respected when he was a young man.

"(I had a lot of) admiration for him, actually," Voight said. "I grew up in the '60s, and he was important for us all, as a nation -- Ali and Cosell, too, were people who had a certain integrity and we rooted for them and they stood for things. Cosell was an advocate for many things. He had a very strong stance on civil rights and when he befriended Ali and stood for Ali, that meant a great deal to everybody ... and it was a tough time for all of us. And those two guys provided us with a lot of smiles ... We could count on both of these guys to tell it like it is ... They gave you what they thought, and they didn't care what the ramifications were and they did that at a time when nobody did that. They stood for something."

A dead ringer for Cosell in both voice and appearance in "Ali," Voight insisted he wasn't trying to do an impression of Cosell.

"I did the best I could to evoke him," Voight explained, "to bring him to life."

The father of quirky, Oscar-winning actress Angelina Jolie had eight acting credits in 2001 alone. In addition to co-starring in "Ali," he also essayed Franklin D. Roosevelt in the blockbuster "Pearl Harbor," portrayed the on-screen fathers of Ben Stiller and Jolie respectively in "Zoolander" and "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider," had a role in the film "Unleashed," and appeared in the television projects, "Uprising," "Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story" and "Live From Las Vegas."