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John Joseph Travolta (born February 18, 1954) is an American actor, dancer and singer. He 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 career re-surged 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 has twice been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. The first, for his role in Saturday Night Fever and the second for 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 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. His siblings are Joey, Ellen, Ann, Margaret, and Sam Travolta. Travolta's father was a second-generation Italian American and his mother was Irish American;[4] he grew up in an Irish-American neighborhood and has said that his household was predominantly Irish in culture.[5][6] His family was Roman Catholic.[7]
After attending Dwight Morrow High School,[8] 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'".[9][10] He then moved to Los Angeles to further his career in show business.
Travolta's first California-filmed television role was as a fall victim in, Emergency! (S2E2), in September 1972,[11] 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).[12] 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).[13]
Around this time, Travolta had a hit single entitled "Let Her In" peaking at number ten on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.[14][15] 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.[16]Saturday Night Fever earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.[17] At age 24, Travolta became one of the youngest performers ever nominated for the Best Actor Oscar.[18] 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.[19] 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.[20]
After Urban Cowboy, Travolta starred in a string of flops that sidelined his acting career. These included 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. During that time he was offered, but turned down, lead roles in what would become box office hits, including American Gigolo[21] and An Officer and a Gentleman, both of which went to Richard Gere.[22]
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.[23][24] The movie shifted him back onto the A-list, and he was inundated with offers. Notable roles following Pulp Fiction include a movie-buff loan shark in Get Shorty (1995), an FBI agent and 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.[25] Travolta played Mrs. Edna Turnblad in the remake of Hairspray, his first musical since Grease.[26]
Travolta was involved with actress Diana Hyland, whom he met while filming The Boy in the Plastic Bubble; the relationship ended when she died of breast cancer in 1977.[27]
Travolta married actress Kelly Preston in 1991. The couple had a son, Jett (1992–2009),[28] and have a daughter, Ella Bleu (born 2000). On May 18, 2010, Travolta and Preston announced that she is pregnant with the couple's third child.[29]
Travolta and Preston have regularly attended marriage counseling, and Travolta admits that therapy has helped the marriage.[30]
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.[31]
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.[32] Joining in the effort with other celebrities in helping with the relief efforts, Travolta flew his 707 full of supplies, doctors, and Scientologist Volunteer Ministers into the disaster area in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.[33]
In June 2010, Travolta and Preston donated $10,000 to the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund while on a trip to South Africa.[34]
Travolta and Preston's son, Jett died on January 2, 2009 while on their holiday in The Bahamas.[35][36] A Bahamian death certificate was issued, attributing the cause of death to a seizure.[37] Jett, who had a history of seizures,[38] reportedly suffered from Kawasaki disease in early childhood.[39] Long a source of speculation,[40] in September 2009, Travolta and Preston testified that their son had autism and suffered regular seizures, as part of his testimony in a trial which resulted after an extortion attempt following Jett's death.[41]
On January 23, 2009, three people were arrested in the Bahamas in connection with a multi-million dollar extortion plot against Travolta and Preston around the circumstances of their son's death.[42] 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.[43] 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.[42] 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.[42] She resigned from the Senate as a result of the allegations.[44]
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