Best Known As: The star of Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction
John Travolta was a huge star in the late 1970s, thanks to the success of TV's Welcome Back, Kotter and the movies Carrie (1976), Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Grease (1978). His career since has been a marvel of highs and lows: Moment By Moment (1978) was a legendary bomb, but Urban Cowboy (1980) was a pop culture trend-setter; he bombed again in Blow Out (1981) and Perfect (1983), yet he was in the financially successful comedy series Look Who's Talking (1989-93); he was hailed for a "comeback" and received an Oscar for his role in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994, co-starring Uma Thurman), but the critics famously held their noses for Battlefield Earth (2000). In spite of the lows, he is one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood and keeps making movies. He starred in Swordfish (2001, with Halle Berry and Hugh Jackman), Basic (2003, with Pulp Fiction co-star Samuel L. Jackson) and Be Cool (2005's sequel to Get Shorty, co-starring Vince Vaughn), and in 2007 he had a memorable role as a Baltimore housewife in the musical film Hairspray (also starring Christopher Walken).
Travolta married the actress Kelly Preston in 1991. They had two children: Jett (b. 1992) and Ella Bleu (b. 2000). Jett Travolta died on 2 January 2009 after having a seizure during a family vacation in the Bahamas... John Travolta, like fellow superstar Tom Cruise, is a Scientologist... He has a pilot's license and owns several aircraft.
Representative Albums: "The Collection," "The Best of John Travolta: Let Her In," "The Best of John Travolta"
Representative Songs: "Let Her In," "You're the One That I Want," "Summer Nights"
Biography
During the latter half of the 1970s, John Travolta was the biggest star in Hollywood; after a string of hits in films, on television and on the radio, he had emerged as a true cultural phenomenon, defining tastes in music and fashion while dominating innumerable column inches in newspapers, magazines and gossip columns. Like so many other celebrities, Travolta's initial fame proved short-lived, and by the 1980s he was viewed by the media and the public alike largely as a relic of his era; unlike so many other celebrities, however, he resurfaced, Phoenix-like, the following decade, re-establishing his claims to film superstardom and staking out new territory as one of the most acclaimed actors in contemporary film.
Born February 18, 1954 in Englewood, New Jersey, he was the youngest of six children in an entertainment family: his father, Salvatore, was a former semi-pro football player and his mother, Helen, was an alumna of a radio vocal group called the Sunshine Sisters as well as a high school drama teacher -- all but one of his siblings pursued showbiz careers as well. By the age of 12 Travolta himself had already joined an area actors' group, and was soon appearing in local musicals and dinner-theatre performances; he also took tap-dancing lessons from Gene Kelly's brother Fred. By age 16, he had dropped out of high school to take up acting full-time, relocating to Manhattan to make his off-Broadway debut in 1972 in Rain. A minor role in the touring company of the hit musical Grease followed, and in 1973 Travolta appeared opposite the Andrews Sisters in the Broadway musical Over Here! In 1975, he also made his film bow with a bit role in the horror picture The Devil's Rain.
In 1975, Travolta was cast in a television sitcom titled Welcome Back, Kotter; as Vinnie Barbarino, a dim-witted high school lothario, he shot to overnight superstardom, and quickly his face adorned t-shirts, lunchboxes and the like. Before the first episode of the series even aired, he had also won a small role in Brian DePalmas 1976 classic Carrie, giving him inroads to the movie industry, and at the early peak of his Kotter success he even recorded a series of pop music LPs -- Can't Let Go, John Travolta, and Travolta Fever -- scoring a major hit with the single "Let Her In." Approached with a role in Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven, he was forced to reject the project in the face of a busy Kotter schedule, but in 1976 he was able to shoot a TV feature, director Randal Kleiser's The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, which won considerable critical acclaim. Diana Hyland, the actress who played Travolta's mother in the picture, also became his off-screen lover until her death from cancer in 1977.
In the wake of Hyland's death, Travolta's first major feature film, 1977's Saturday Night Fever, was released. A latter-day Rebel Without a Cause set against the backdrop of the New York City disco nightlife, it positioned Travolta as the most talked-about young star in Hollywood; in addition to earning his first Academy Award nomination, he also became a icon of the era, his white-suited visage and cocky, rhythmic strut enduring as defining images of late-1970s American culture. In 1978, he starred in Kleiser's film adaptation of Grease, this time essaying the lead role of 1950s greaser Danny Zuko; its box office success was even greater than Saturday Night Fever's, becoming a perennial fan favorite and, like its predecessor, spawning a massively popular soundtrack LP. In the light of his back-to-back successes, as well as the continued popularity of Welcome Back, Kotter -- on which he still occasionally appeared -- it seemed Travolta could do no wrong.
And then the bottom dropped out. Travolta's first misstep was 1978's Moment by Moment, a laughable May-December romance with Lily Tomlin; savaged by critics, the picture was a box-office disaster, the first major failure of his career. Travota then turned down the lead in Paul Schrader's hit American Gigolo -- a role which, like the one offered in Days of Heaven, was then awarded to Richard Gere -- to star in 1980's Urban Cowboy, which restored much of his financial lustre. Starring Travolta as a Texas oil worker, the film and its accompanying smash soundtrack did for country music and ten-gallon hats what Saturday Night Fever did for disco and leisure suits, and resulted in such an influx of new country fans that Nashville's entire early-1980s period was later dubbed the "Urban Cowboy" era by music historians. The following year he starred in DePalma's under-recognized Blow Out, resulting in some of the best critical notices of his career but falling well short of box office expectations.
Travolta then rejected the lead in An Officer and a Gentleman (yet another role then eagerly accepted by Gere) to reprise the role of Tony Manero in the Saturday Night Fever sequel Staying Alive. Directed by Sylvester Stallone, the film was released in 1983 to respectable returns, but fell far short of its anticipated blockbuster status; Two of a Kind, released a few months later, reunited Travolta with his Grease co-star Olivia Newton-John, but again lightning failed to strike twice and the movie soon disappeared from theaters. By now Travolta's career was on shaky ground, and after a two-year absence from the screen he returned in 1985's Perfect; when it too failed to live up to expectations, he was roundly dismissed as a flash in the pan and a has-been, and several years of poor career choices, bad advice and missed opportunites were to follow. By 1988 Travolta had been missing from theaters for three years, and when the oft-delayed comedy The Experts finally surfaced in theaters in 1989, its disastrous showing seemed the final nail in his coffin.
Later that same year, however, the unheralded, low-budget comedy Look Who's Talking was released; co-starring Travolta and Kirstie Alley, it was produced for some $8 million but went on to gross close to $150 million over the course of the following 12 months, later spawning a pair of sequels, 1990's Look Who's Talking Too and 1993's Look Who's Talking Now. However, both of Travolta's 1991 pictures, Eyes of an Angel and Shout, fared poorly, and as the Look Who's Talking series sputtered to a halt he was again written off by the press. Then, in 1994, he made one of the most stunning comebacks in entertainment history by starring in Pulp Fiction, a lavishly-acclaimed crime film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, a longtime Travolta fan who wrote the role of Vincent Vega specifically with the actor in mind. A critical as well as commercial smash, Pulp Fiction introduced Travolta to a new generation of moviegoers, and suddenly he was again a major star, with a second Academy Award nomination to prove it.
In the wake of Pulp Fiction, the resurrected Travolta became one of the hardest-working actors in Hollywood, and on Tarantino's advice he accepted the starring role in director Barry Sonnenfeld's 1995 Elmore Leonard adaptation Get Shorty; acclaimed by many critics as his finest performance to date, it was another major hit, and he followed it by appearing in the 1996 John Woo action tale Broken Arrow. Phenomenon was another smash that same summer, and by Christmas Travolta was back in theaters as a disreputable angel in Michael. The following year he reunited with Woo in the highly successful thriller Face/Off, which he trailed with a supporting turn in Nick Cassavetes' She's So Lovely. After 1997's Mad City, Travolta began work on Primary Colors, Mike Nichols' political satire, portraying a charismatic, Bill Clinton-like U.S. President; an adaptation of the acclaimed book A Civil Action was to follow. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide
Career Highlights: Saturday Night Fever, Grease, Blow Out
First Major Screen Credit: Welcome Back, Kotter: Season 01 (1975)
Biography
During the last few years of the 1970s, John Travolta reigned as one of the most towering stars in Hollywood, second, perhaps, only to Burt Reynolds and Robert Redford as a top male box office draw. After a string of hits in films, on television, and on the radio, Travolta emerged as a seemingly unstoppable cultural phenomenon, defining tastes in music and fashion while dominating innumerable columns of newspapers and tabloids. Like so many other celebrities, Travolta's initial fame proved short-lived, however, and by the mid-1980s the media and the public alike began to regard him as an outmoded relic of his era.
But in 1994, Travolta pulled off an astonishing feat: after years languishing in dull Hollywood by-product, he resurfaced, rising like a Phoenix from the ashes of has-been obscurity, reestablishing his claims to film superstardom and staking out new territory as one of the most acclaimed actors in contemporary film.
Born February 18, 1954, in Englewood, NJ, to Salvatore Travolta, a former semi-pro football player, and Helen Travolta, an alumna of a radio vocal group called the Sunshine Sisters and high-school drama teacher -- Travolta was the youngest of six children in a family of entertainers; all but one of his siblings pursued showbusiness careers as well. By the age of 12 Travolta himself had already joined an area actors' group, and soon began appearing in local musicals and dinner-theater performances. He also took tap-dancing lessons from Gene Kelly's brother Fred. By age 16, he dropped out of high school to take up acting full-time, relocating to Manhattan to make his off-Broadway debut in 1972 in Rain. A minor role in the touring company of the hit musical Grease followed, and in 1973 Travolta appeared opposite The Andrews Sisters in the Broadway musical Over Here! In 1975, he took his film bow with a bit role in the best-forgotten horror picture The Devil's Rain, alongside Ernest Borgnine, William Shatner and Anton La Vey.
In 1975, Travolta was cast in an ABC sitcom entitled Welcome Back, Kotter. As Vinnie Barbarino, a dim-witted high school Lothario, he shot to overnight superstardom, and his face instantly adorned T-shirts and lunch boxes. Before the first episode of the series even aired, he also won a small role in Brian De Palma's wickedly funny 1976 horror picture Carrie, giving him inroads to the movie industry, and at the early peak of his Kotter success he even recorded a series of pop music LPs -- Can't Let Go, John Travolta, and Travolta Fever -- scoring a major hit with the single "Let Her In." Approached with a role in Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven, he was forced to reject the project in the face of a busy Kotter schedule, but in 1976 he was able to shoot a TV feature, director Randal Kleiser's The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, which won considerable critical acclaim. Diana Hyland, the actress who played Travolta's mother in the picture, also became his offscreen lover until her death from cancer in 1977.
In the wake of Hyland's death, Travolta's first major feature film, John Badham's Saturday Night Fever (1977), emerged in the fall of that year. A latter-day Rebel Without a Cause set against the backdrop of the New York City disco nightlife, it positioned Travolta as the most talked-about young star in Hollywood. In addition to earning his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, he also became an icon of the era, his white-suited visage and cocky, rhythmic strut enduring as defining images of late-'70s American culture. In 1978, he starred in Kleiser's film adaptation of Grease, this time essaying the lead role of 1950s greaser Danny Zuko. Its box-office success was even greater than Saturday Night Fever's, becoming a perennial fan favorite and, like its predecessor, spawning a massively popular soundtrack LP. In the light of his back-to-back successes, as well as the continued popularity of Welcome Back, Kotter -- on which he still occasionally appeared -- it seemed Travolta could do no wrong. And then, the bottom dropped out.
Travolta's first misstep was 1978's Moment By Moment, a laughable May-December romance with Lily Tomlin. Savaged by critics, the picture was a box-office disaster, the first major failure of his career. Travolta then turned down the lead in Paul Schrader's hit American Gigolo (a role which, like the one offered in Days of Heaven, was then awarded to Richard Gere) to star in 1980's Urban Cowboy, which restored much of his financial lustre. Starring Travolta as a Texas oil worker, the film and its accompanying smash soundtrack did for country music and ten-gallon hats what Saturday Night Fever did for disco and leisure suits, and resulted in such an influx of new country fans that Nashville's entire early-'80s period was later dubbed the "Urban Cowboy" era by music historians. The following year he starred in De Palma's under-recognized Blow Out, resulting in some of the best critical notices of his career but falling well short of box-office expectations.
Travolta then rejected the lead in An Officer and a Gentleman (yet another role eagerly accepted by Gere) to reprise the role of Tony Manero in the Saturday Night Fever sequel Staying Alive. Directed by Sylvester Stallone as a kind of Rocky retread, the film was released in August 1983 to embarrassing returns and horrendous reviews; critic after critic quite rightly ripped it to pieces. Pauline Kael tagged it "ludicrous," and suggested, on the basis of this film, that the studios give their stars to director Stallone whenever they needed to be punished.
Two of a Kind, released a few months later, reunited Travolta with his Grease co-star Olivia Newton-John, but lightning again failed to strike twice and the movie soon disappeared from theaters. By now Travolta's career was on shaky ground, and after a two-year absence from the screen he returned in 1985's Perfect, a reunion with director James Bridges that cast Travolta as a journalist modeled on Aaron Latham who investigates the aerobics scene. When it too failed to live up to expectations, he was roundly dismissed as a flash in the pan and a has-been, and several years of poor career choices, bad advice, and missed opportunities were to follow. By 1988 Travolta had been missing from theaters for three years, and when the oft-delayed comedy The Experts finally surfaced in theaters in 1989, its disastrous showing seemed the final nail in his coffin.
Later that same year, the unheralded, low-budget comedy Look Who's Talking was released and marked a comeback - albeit an admittedly temporary one. Co-starring Travolta and Kirstie Alley, it was produced for some eight million dollars but went on to gross close to 150 million dollars over the course of the following 12 months, later spawning a pair of sequels, 1990's Look Who's Talking Too and 1993's Look Who's Talking Now. However, both of Travolta's 1991 pictures, the long-shelved Eyes of an Angel and Shout, fared poorly, and as the Look Who's Talking series sputtered to a halt he was again written off by the press.
Then, in 1994, Travolta made one of the most stunning comebacks in entertainment history by starring in Pulp Fiction, a lavishly acclaimed crime film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, a longtime Travolta fan who wrote the role of Vincent Vega specifically with the actor in mind; Travolta reportedly waived his salary to play the role. A critical as well as commercial smash, Pulp Fiction introduced Travolta to a new generation of moviegoers, and suddenly he was again a major star who could command a massive salary, with a second Academy Award nomination to prove it.
In the wake of Pulp Fiction, the resurrected Travolta became one of the hardest-working actors in Hollywood, and on Tarantino's advice he accepted the starring role in director Barry Sonnenfeld's 1995 Elmore Leonard adaptation Get Shorty. Acclaimed by many critics as his finest performance to date, it was another major hit, and he followed it by appearing in the 1996 John Woo action tale Broken Arrow. Phenomenon was another smash that same summer, and by Christmas Travolta was back in theaters as a disreputable angel in Michael. The following year he reunited with Woo in the highly successful thriller Face/Off, which he trailed with a supporting turn in Nick Cassavetes' She's So Lovely. After 1997's Mad City, Travolta began work on Primary Colors, Mike Nichols' political satire, portraying a charismatic, Bill Clinton-like U.S. President. An adaptation of the acclaimed book A Civil Action followed, as did the 1999 thriller The General's Daughter, in which Travolta co-starred with Madeline Stowe.
In 2000, the actor starred as an alien invader in the sci-fi thriller Battlefield Earth, based on the novel by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard (whose teachings Travolta publicly admires and advocates). That same year he returned to human form to portray a financially strapped TV weatherman in Lucky Numbers, a comedy directed by Nora Ephron. Though Travolta had high hopes for Battlefield Earth, often citing it as the next Star Wars (and even going so far as to plan a sequel before the first was released), the film was seen as little more than an overblown, over-budgeted orgy of excess, and Lucky Numbers fell flat at the box office as well. Facing yet another comeback, Travolta shed some pounds and jumped back into action in the summer of 2001 with Swordfish. A complex tale of mixed loyalties, computer hacking, and espionage, Swordfish teamed Travolta with X-Men star Hugh Jackman in hopes of dominating the summer box office.
Having somewhat recovered from yet another career slump, Travolta went on to star in the low-key A Love Song for Bobby Long, which Lionsgate openly touted as a serious Oscar contender. Unfortunately, the film was not well received by audiences or critics, and neither was the comic book adaptation The Punisher, which Travolta appeared in around the same time. While he received more praise for his performance in Ladder 49, a film about the lives of firefighters, his career took another hit in 2004 when he reprised the role of Chili Palmer in Be Cool, a sequel to Get Shorty. The film was panned both in the press and at the box office as a major disappointment.
Unfazed, Travolta joined the cast of Todd Robinson's Lonely Hearts (2007), the second major American studio release to investigate the homicides committed by lovers Raymond Martinez and Martha Beck against octogenarian women in the 1940s. Whereas Leonard Kastle's 1970 black comedy The Honeymoon Killers observed the incidents from the perspective of the murderers, however, the more sober Robinson film follows two homicide detectives (Travolta and James Gandolfini) in their pursuit of the serial killers (here played by Salma Hayek and Jared Leto). Millenium Films slated the picture for stateside release in mid-January, 2007.
Meanwhile, Travolta geared up for two wildly diverse additional roles to carry him through the end of that year. In the March 2007 road comedy Wild Hogs, he stars alongside a dream cast - Tim Allen, Martin Lawrence and William H. Macy - as one of four listless suburbanites who decide to "live on the edge" by grabbing their sawed-off choppers and hitting the open road as would-be Hell's Angels. And in Hairspray, Adam Shankman's screen adaptation of the stage musical (which, in turn, is an adaptation of John Waters's 1988 feature) Travolta reprised the Edna Turnblad role, made famous by female impersonator Divine, by donning a dress and a coiffe. .
Travolta married actress Kelly Preston in 1991, with whom he has two children. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
John Joseph Travolta (born February 18, 1954) is an American actor, dancer and singer, best known for his leading roles in films such as Saturday Night Fever, Grease and Pulp Fiction.
Travolta, the youngest of six children,[1] was born and raised in Englewood, New Jersey, an inner-ring suburb of New York City. His father, Salvatore Travolta, was a semi-professional football player turned tire salesman and partner in a tire company.[2] His mother, Helen Cecilia (née Burke), who was 42 when Travolta was born, was an actress and singer who had appeared in The Sunshine Sisters, a radio vocal group, and acted and directed before becoming a high school drama and English teacher. His father was a second-generation Italian American and his mother was Irish American;[3][4] He grew up in an Irish-American neighborhood[5] and has said that his household was predominantly Irish in culture. His family was Roman Catholic.[6]
Travolta played a messenger on the CBSsoap operaThe Edge of Night. He also appeared on another CBS serial The Secret Storm. Travolta's first California-filmed television role was as a fall victim in, Emergency! (S2E2), in September 1972, but his first significant movie role was as, "Billy Nolan," a bully who was goaded into playing a prank on Sissy Spacek's character in the horror film, Carrie (1976). Around the same time, he landed his star-making role as, "Vinnie Barbarino," in the TV sitcomWelcome Back, Kotter (1975–1979), in which his sister, Ellen, also occasionally appeared (as Arnold Horshack's mother).
Around this time he also had a hit single entitled "Let Her In" peaking at number ten on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. In the next few years, he appeared in some of his most memorable screen roles: Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever (1977) and as Danny Zuko in Grease (1978). These two films were among the most commercially successful pictures of the decade and catapulted Travolta to international stardom. Saturday Night Fever earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. At age 24, Travolta became one of the youngest performers ever nominated for the Best Actor Oscar though he lost to Richard Dreyfuss in The Goodbye Girl. His mother and his sister Ann appeared as extras in Saturday Night Fever and his sister Ellen appeared as a waitress in Grease. Travolta performed several of the songs on the Grease soundtrack album, which eventually went on to sell more than 10 million copies. In 1980, Travolta inspired a nationwide country music craze that followed on the heels of his hit film, Urban Cowboy, in which he starred with Debra Winger.
Downturn
Travolta in 1983
After Urban Cowboy came a string of flops that sidelined his acting career. Staying Alive, the sequel to Saturday Night Fever, Perfect, co-starring Jamie Lee Curtis, and Two of a Kind, a romantic comedy reteaming him with Olivia Newton-John, were all commercial disasters severely beaten up by critics. Some suggest that he was typecast as a disco stud or 1970s icon, which could be the reason his agent intervened on several occasions to turn down acting roles. During that time he was offered, but turned down, lead roles in what would become box office hits, including American Gigolo, Flashdance, An Officer and a Gentleman, Splash and Fatal Attraction. Disenchanted, Travolta pursued flying and eventually earned his license to command aircraft. His only hit film was Look Who's Talking with Kirstie Alley and a baby voiced by Bruce Willis.
Resurgence
It was not until he played Vincent Vega in Quentin Tarantino's hit Pulp Fiction (1994), for which he received an Academy Award nomination, that his career was revived. The movie shifted him back onto the A-list, and he was inundated with offers. Coincidentally, before Travolta took the role he visited Tarantino, who was living in the same ramshackle apartment in Los Angeles that Travolta had inhabited when he got his start. Notable roles following Pulp Fiction include a movie-buff loan shark in Get Shorty (1995), an FBI agent/terrorist in Face/Off (1997), a desperate attorney in A Civil Action (1998), a Bill Clinton-esque presidential candidate in Primary Colors (1998) and a military detective in The General's Daughter (1999).
Travolta also starred in Battlefield Earth (2000) based on a work of science fiction by L. Ron Hubbard, in which he played the leader of a group of aliens that enslaves humanity on a bleak future Earth. The film received almost universally negative reviews and did very poorly at the box office.[7] The film won a Razzie Award for Worst Film of the Year at the 2000 awards. Travolta, who became a Scientologist in 1975 and endorses Hubbard's teachings, had hoped that the film would be well received and be the first in a series of Hubbard film adaptations. In 2004, Travolta played Deputy Chief Mike Kennedy in the Ladder 49. This film was notable for being the first post-9/11 film that focused on the life of a crew of firefighters. Travolta starred as a successful businessman gone broke/biker in 2007's Wild Hogs. Travolta plays Edna Turnblad in the remake of Hairspray, his first musical since Grease.[8]
His most recent film is the lead voice role of the Disney film Bolt (2008), where he plays a lost canine actor trying to get home and also sung "I Thought I Lost You,' the duet for the ending credits of the film with co-star Miley Cyrus. In 2009 he will appear in Old Dogs, a live-action comedy, co-starring with Robin Williams and Bernie Mac.
Personal life
Travolta married actress Kelly Preston in 1991. The couple had two children: Jett, born on April 13, 1992, and Ella Bleu, born in 2000. Their son, Jett died on January 2, 2009 while the family was on holiday in The Bahamas.[9][10] A Bahamian death certificate was issued, attributing the cause of death to a seizure.[11] Jett, who had a history of seizures,[12] reportedly suffered from Kawasaki disease in early childhood.[13]
The couple has regularly attended marriage counselling, and Travolta admits that this has helped the marriage.[14]
Travolta is a certified pilot and owns five aircraft, including an ex-Australian Boeing 707-138 airliner. The plane bears the name Jett Clipper Ella in honor of his children. Pan American World Airways was a large operator of the Boeing 707 and used Clipper in its names. The 707 aircraft bears the marks of Qantas, as Travolta acts as an official goodwill ambassador for the airline wherever he flies. His $4.9 million estate in the Jumbolair subdivision in Ocala, Florida, is situated on Greystone Airport with its own runway and taxiway right to his front door.[16]
On January 23, 2009, three people were arrested in the Bahamas in connection with a multi-million dollar extortion plot against the Travolta family around the circumstances of Jett's death.[18] It is believed that the plot centered around a "refusal to transport" document allegedly signed by Travolta when paramedics arrived to treat Jett, that a police spokesman noted did not apply in the Travolta case.[19] One of the men, Obie Wilchcombe, a member of the Bahamian Parliament and former Bahamian Minister of Tourism, was described as a "close friend" of the Travolta family.[18] The other two people allegedly involved are EMT Tarino Lightbourne and former senator Pleasant Bridgewater, who was charged with abetment to extort and conspiracy to extort.[18] She resigned from the Senate as a result of the allegations.[20]
