Not everything is rotten in the state of mind called Hollywood. While some stars seek outrageous fortune, Jon Voight recently dipped into his own pocket to produce and star in a pro-am Hamlet in a Cal State campus theater. The two-week run was a sellout. "I have found the stage much more gratifying than my recent films," says Voight (lately in Conrack and The Odessa File). "I have to retain what dignity I can in this business. I want to be the boss, and I want to work."

Voight, 37, is no theatrical parvenu—he was on-and off-Broadway almost a decade before first scoring in pictures with Midnight Cowboy. And for him, there's nothing more restorative than recommuning with the Bard. After an earlier Romeo and Juliet, Voight reports, "I wrote all my actor friends and said, 'Do some Shakespeare, man, it will clear your head.' " Hamlet is most personally resonant to him because "it's a marvelous story" and, in his view, mostly "about the way we raise our children." Jon admits to being fascinated by the subject since his own dad, a golf pro in New York's Westchester County, died in a car crash two years ago. By way of tribute Voight and his two brothers scaled a Montana peak to install an affectionate plaque, and recently Jon has written two screenplays exploring the father-son relationship.

Jon seems to be a liberated dad himself, sharing equal charge of his kids, Jamie, 3, and Angelica, 9 months, with his second wife, Marcheline. Their L.A. life-style is studiously not of star quality. "I never take a part just for the money," insists Jon. But he'll play a priest in the upcoming Exorcist sequel, directed by his pal from Deliverance, John Boorman. That will help subsidize his Hamlet on tour, which, Voight maintains, "I would be happy doing every day for the rest of my life. It's a play that was written to go on the road. But I want to show it in small houses, free from the financial responsibilities."