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.
Previous:
Jim Thorpe (Olympian / Football Player / Baseball Player), Jennifer Tilly (Actor / Poker Player)
Born February 18, 1954, in Englewood, John 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. 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, and a minor role in the touring company of the hit musical Grease followed.
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 1976 horror picture Carrie, 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 - but things wouldn't always be so rosy for the performer.
Travolta's first misstep was 1978's Moment By Moment, a laughable May-December romance with Lily Tomlin. He then reprised 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 1983 to embarrassing returns and horrendous reviews. It would prove to be just one in a string of '80s stinkers for the actor, followed by disappointments like Two of a Kind, Perfect, and The Experts. He made a minor comeback with 1989's Look Who's Talking, which fared well at the box office, but the movie did little for Travolta's reputation, and the performer was all but completely washed up by the beginning of the '90s.
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.
Travolta did suffer an embarrassment in 2000, when he produced and starred in the sci-fi thriller Battlefield Earth, based on the novel by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard (whose teachings Travolta publicly admired and advocated). The film was universally panned as so bad it was funny, but Travolta bounced back, shedding some pounds to play the baddie in 2001 action thriller 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. This put Travolta in good shape to weather another disappointment, when his dramatic Oscar contender A Love Song for Bobby Long, was not well received by audiences or critics. 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 that proved to have none of the magic that made its predecessor so successful.
Unfazed, Travolta signed on to star in the 2007 Baby Boomer comedy Wild Hogs, alongside a dream cast of Tim Allen, Martin Lawrence and William H. Macy, who played 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. Later that year, Travolta took another comedic turn in Hairspray, Adam Shankman's screen adaptation of the stage musical (which, in turn, is an adaptation of John Waters's 1988 feature), which put Travolta in drag to play the heavy set, bouffant hair-do'd mother once played by drag queen Divine. He would follow this up with some middling action fare, with The Taking of Pelham 13 and From Paris with Love, as well as a sequel to Wild Hogs, 2009's Old Dogs. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi
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 '80s, 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, NJ, 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 show biz 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 theater 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 debut 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, lunch boxes, 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 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 '50s 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 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 luster. 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 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 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, however, the unheralded, low-budget comedy Look Who's Talking was released; co-starring Travolta and Kirstie Alley, it was produced for some eight million dollars 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, Rovi
John Joseph Travolta (born February 18, 1954) is an American actor, dancer, and singer. Travolta first became known in the 1970s, after appearing on the television series Welcome Back, Kotter and starring in the box office successes Saturday Night Fever and Grease. Travolta's acting career declined in the early 1980s and continued to deteriorate for the rest of the decade. His career enjoyed a resurgence in the 1990s with his role in Pulp Fiction, and he has since continued starring in Hollywood films, including Face/Off, Ladder 49, and Wild Hogs. Travolta was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction. He won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for his performance in Get Shorty.
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 (November 1912 – May 1995),[2] was a semi-professional American football player turned tire salesman and partner in a tire company.[3] His mother, Helen Cecilia (née Burke, January 1912 – December 1978),[2] 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.[4] His siblings, Joey, Ellen, Ann, Margaret, and Sam Travolta, have all acted.[4] His father was a second-generation Italian American and his mother was Irish American;[5][6] he grew up in an Irish-American neighborhood and has said that his household was predominantly Irish in culture.[7][8] He was raised Roman Catholic, but converted to Scientology in 1975.[6][9]
Travolta's first California-filmed television role was as a fall victim in, Emergency! (S2E2), in September 1972,[13] 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).[14] Around the same time, he landed his star-making role as Vinnie Barbarino in the TV sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975–1979), in which his sister, Ellen, also occasionally appeared (as Arnold Horshack's mother).[15] The show aired on ABC.
'70s stardom
Around this time, Travolta had a hit single entitled "Let Her In", peaking at number ten on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.[16][17] In the next few years, he appeared in two of his most noted screen roles: Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever (1977) and as Danny Zuko in Grease (1978).[4] The films were among the most commercially successful pictures of the decade and catapulted Travolta to international stardom.[18]Saturday Night Fever earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.[19] At age 24, Travolta became one of the youngest performers ever nominated for the Best Actor Oscar.[20] 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.[21] 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.[22]
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.[27] Travolta played Mrs. Edna Turnblad in the remake of Hairspray, his first musical since Grease.[28]
Travolta married actress Kelly Preston in 1991. The couple had a son, Jett (1992–2009).[30] Their daughter, Ella Bleu, was born in 2000. On May 18, 2010, Travolta and Preston announced that she was pregnant with the couple's third child,[31] later confirmed to be a boy.[32] Their son, Benjamin, was born on November 23, 2010 in Florida.[33]
Travolta and Preston have regularly attended marriage counseling; Travolta has stated that therapy has helped the marriage.[34]
Travolta is a certified private pilot and owns five aircraft, including an ex-Qantas Boeing 707–138 airliner. The plane bears the name Jett Clipper Ella in honor of his children.[35]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.[36]
On November 24, 1992, Travolta was piloting his Gulfstream N728T at night on top of a solid undercast when he experienced a total electrical system failure while flying under instrument flight rules into Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. During the emergency landing he almost had a mid-air collision with a USAirBoeing 727, attributed to a risky decision by an air traffic controller.[37]
On September 13, 2010, during the first episode of the final season of her talk show, Oprah Winfrey announced that she would be taking her entire studio audience on an 8-day expenses-paid trip to Australia, with Travolta serving as pilot for the trip. He had helped Winfrey plan the trip for over a year.[38]
Travolta has been a practitioner of Scientology since 1975 when he was given the book Dianetics while filming the movie The Devil's Rain in Durango, Mexico.[39] After the 2010 Haiti earthquake, joining other celebrities in helping with the relief efforts, Travolta flew his 707 full of supplies, doctors, and Scientologist Volunteer Ministers into the disaster area.[40]
Son's death
On January 2, 2009, Travolta and Preston's son, Jett, died while on their holiday vacation in The Bahamas.[41][42] A Bahamian death certificate was issued, attributing the cause of death to a seizure.[43] Jett, who had a history of seizures,[44] reportedly suffered from Kawasaki disease as an infant.[45] On September 24, 2009,[46] Travolta and Preston confirmed speculations that their son had autism and suffered regular seizures.[47] They made their statements while giving testimony after a multi-million dollar extortion plot against them regarding the circumstances of their son's death. After a mistrial, [48] Travolta dropped the charges.[49] Travolta has credited his family and faith in helping him survive the tragic death of his son, and in moving forward with his film career.[50]
Wikipedia on Answers.com. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article John Travolta. Read more
