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John Travolta
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John Joseph Travolta (born February 18, 1954) is a two-time Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Screen Actors Guild Award-nominated and Golden Globe Award-winning American actor, dancer and singer, best known for his leading roles in films such as Saturday Night Fever, Grease and Pulp Fiction.
olta, the youngest of six children, 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.
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Encyclopedia
John Joseph Travolta (born February 18, 1954) is a two-time Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Screen Actors Guild Award-nominated and Golden Globe Award-winning American actor, dancer and singer, best known for his leading roles in films such as Saturday Night Fever, Grease and Pulp Fiction.
Biography
Early life
Travolta, the youngest of six children, 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. 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; He grew up in an Irish-American neighborhood and has said that his household was predominantly Irish in culture. His family was Roman Catholic.
Early career
After attending Dwight Morrow High School, Travolta moved across the Hudson River to New York City and landed a role in the touring company of the musical Grease and on Broadway in Over Here! singing the Sherman Brothers' song "Dream Drummin'". He then moved to Los Angeles to further his career in show business.
Travolta played a messenger on the CBS soap opera The 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 sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975–1979), in which his sister, Ellen, also occasionally appeared (as Arnold Horshack's mother).
'70s stardom
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, that 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
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. The film won a Razzie Award for Worst Film of the Year at the 2000 awards. Travolta, who joined Scientology 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.
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. A Bahamian death certificate was issued, attributing the cause of death to a seizure. Jett, who had a history of seizures, reportedly suffered from Kawasaki disease in early childhood.
The couple has regularly attended marriage counselling, and Travolta admits that this has helped the marriage.
Travolta was previously involved with actress Diana Hyland, whom he met while filming The Boy in the Plastic Bubble; Hyland died of breast cancer in 1977.
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.
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 .
Extortion plot
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. 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. 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. 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. She resigned from the Senate as a result of the allegations.
Filmography
Salary
Television series
-style="background:#B0C4DE;"
! Year
! Title
! Role
! Other notes
|-
|rowspan=2|1972
| Emergency!
| Casey
|Episode: "Kids"
|-
|Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law
|
|Episode: "A Piece of God"
|-
| 1973
| The Rookies
| Eddie Halley
|Episode: " Frozen Smoke"
|-
| 1974
| Medical Center
| Danny
|Episode: "Saturday's Child"
|-
| 1975-1979
| Welcome Back, Kotter
| Vincent "Vinnie" Barbarino
|
|-
Music career
Discography
- Over Here! (Original Cast Album) (1974)
- John Travolta (1976)
- Can't Let You Go (1977)
- Travolta Fever (1978)
- Grease (movie soundtrack) (1978)
- The Road to Freedom (Scientology album) (1986)
- Let Her In: The Best of John Travolta (1996)
- The Collection (2003)
- Hairspray (2007)
- Whenever I'm away from you, baby
Singles
- "You Set My Dreams To Music" (1969)
- "Goodnight Mr. Moon" (1969)
- "Rainbows" (1969)
- "Settle Down" (1970)
- "Moonlight Lady" (1971)
- "Right Time Of The Night" (1972)
- "Big Trouble" (1972)
- "What Would They Say" (1973)
- "Back Doors Crying" (1973)
- "Dream Drummin'" (1974)
- "Easy Evil" (1975)
- "Can't Let You Go" (1975)
- "Let Her In" (1976)
- "Slow Dancin'" (1976)
- "It Had To Be You" (1976)
- "I Don't Know What I Like About You Baby" (1976)
- "Baby, I Could Be So Good At Lovin' You" (1977)
- "Razzamatazz" (1977)
- "Sandy" (1978)
- "Greased Lightnin" (1978)
- "Never Gonna Fall In Love Again" (1980)
- "Hooker Madness" (1983)
- "I Thought I Lost You" (2008)
See also
External links
Further reading
- Tast, Brigitte (ed.) John Travolta. (Hildesheim/Germany 1978) ISBN 3-88842-103-9.
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