Angelina Jolie might not be estranged from her father Jon Voight anymore, but they certainly don't see eye-to-eye politically.
In an interview with Variety, the politically outspoken 85-year-old actor said that he believes that his daughter has been subjected to "propaganda" that led to her various statements in support of Palestine. "She has been exposed to propaganda," said Voight, who has repeatedly voiced support for Israel. "She’s been influenced by antisemitic people. Angie has a connection to the U.N., and she’s enjoyed speaking out for refugees. But these people are not refugees."
Jolie has long been a humanitarian and wrote an extensive statement criticizing Israel's military actions in Palestine following the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas. "This is the deliberate bombing of a trapped population who have nowhere to flee," she wrote. "Gaza has been an open-air prison for nearly two decades and is fast becoming a mass grave. 40% of those killed are innocent children. … Whole families are being murdered.”
Voight already posted a video in which he made it clear he disagreed with his daughter. "This is justice for God's children of the Holy Land," he said.
"I love my daughter—that’s No. 1," Voight told Variety. "I am happy when Angie is happy. When she’s having a tough time, I’m having a tough time. When she is down, I’m down. … Angie, I think she hasn’t been available to this information because in Hollywood people don’t share this kind of stuff. They’re way off. They have no idea what’s going on. It’s a bubble. … I don’t want to fight with my daughter. But the fact is, I think she has been influenced by the U.N. From the beginning, it’s been awful with human rights. They call it human rights, but it’s just anti-Israel bashing."
He added that she's "ignorant of what the real stakes are and what the real story is because she's in the loop of the United Nations," referring to her past work with the United Nations.
Voight and Jolie have had a turbulent relationship ever since she was young. She was raised primarily by her mother Marcheline Bertrand, who finalized her divorce from Voight in 1980 over claims of infidelity. "When my father had an affair, it changed [my mom's] life," Jolie wrote in an editorial on Mother's Day, 2020 for The New York Times. The two briefly reconciled when they starred together in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, but they became further estranged not long after.
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Voight told Entertainment Weekly in 2002 that his daughter had "mental problems," and her brief marriage to Billy Bob Thornton was doomed from the start. Shortly after the interview, she legally changed her last name to 'Jolie' instead of 'Voight.' She publicly commented that their relationship was "bad," but did not divulge further. They reconciled again in 2010, at which point he met all six of his grandchildren. Following her divorce from Brad Pitt in 2017, Jolie and Voight reportedly sought to bury the hatchet, per The Hollywood Reporter.
While Voight was a noted anti-war critic in his early years, publicly supporting John F. Kennedy and protesting the Vietnam War, he has since become a prominent supporter of Donald Trump. He received the National Medal of Arts from the former Republican president in 2019.
