• March 15, 1999

John Travolta

By Jill Smolowe

The Comeback Kid Had What It Takes to Make It—Twice

In the '70s he seduced audiences by gyrating his slender hips in Saturday Night Fever and Grease. In the '90s he was celebrated again for wiggling his not-so-slender hips in Pulp Fiction. In between, at its nadir, his career languished so badly that everyone thought he was washed up—everyone, that is, except John Travolta. "I could never have 'come back' if the fans weren't there ready for me," says Travolta, 45, who even during his driest years needed security guards for protection from adoring fans. "I wasn't even aware that my career was not viewed as potentially refurbishable." Still, he was just wrapping Look Who's Talking Now—and no other films were on the horizon—when Quentin Tarantino offered him 1994's Fiction. "Quentin said, 'It's something you need to do and should do,' " says Travolta. It was sound advice. He got $100,000 for that film; four years later, he cleared $20 million for Primary Colors.

Travolta is not giving anybody a chance to forget him again. He has appeared in 10 movies during the past three years, most recently A Civil Action and The Thin Red Line. The General's Daughter is due this June, and he'll begin work next month on Standing Room Only, which will costar his wife of seven years, Kelly Preston, 36. His output is even more impressive for the breadth of his roles, from Fiction's heroinaddicted psycho to Action's justice-seeking JOHN lawyer. "People relate to him in every part," says Kyra Sedgwick, his costar in 1996's Phenomenon. "He makes you see the humanity in all the different roles."

Though twice nominated for Oscars (for Fever and Fiction), Travolta has been criticized for turning down some of Hollywood's choicest parts. "If I had done An Officer and a Gentleman and Splash," he says, "what I would have had is one of these more regulated careers. Nothing truly dynamic would have happened." And high voltage is much of what Travolta is about. "He has the most energy I've ever encountered," says Karen Lynn Gorney, his Fever dance partner. "There's this electricity underneath his surface." He had no problem tapping into it. "I was very comfortable projecting that essence," he says of his hot-blooded Fever character Tony Manero and of Grease's "cool and sexy" Danny Zuko. His rise to stardom, he says, "was 150 percent a dream come true."

A stylish dresser who owns homes in California, Maine and Hawaii and employs some two dozen staffers, Travolta savors the finer things success offers. His daily lunches are three-course affairs, even on a movie set. "Ronnie Howard came to visit me one day while I was making Primary Colors, and he just loved it; it was beef Wellington with veggies on the side. Tom Hanks walked in and said, 'You eat like this every day?' I said, 'Yes, I do.' " Over lunch at L.A.'s posh Four Seasons hotel, where he always gets his favorite corner table, Travolta says, "I've moved up in the world, but I'm very much the same." Take his tuna tartare appetizer: "A tuna-fish sandwich, only now it's raw." And the chocolate cake topped with fresh cream? "My imitation of a Hostess cupcake," he says with a laugh. "They're gourmet versions of things I used to like."

As the youngest of six children born in Englewood, N.J., to Salvatore, a tire shop owner, and Helen, a drama coach, Travolta learned to get the most out of life. "Every day my mother had tea. My dad had his ritual cigar. They had their evening cocktail. Those rituals were done nicely, with flair and feeling." He developed his own tastes too—not only for food but for flying. He stockpiled spare change from odd jobs to buy airline tickets just for the ride. At 16 he took a supermarket job to pay for flying lessons. Today he owns and flies four planes.

He was also driven by a need to perform: Most nights his parents watched him lip-synch, tap-dance and make up plays. "My dad would go, 'Oh, Helen, jeez, he's great!' " Travolta recalls. His mother, who died in 1978, supported his decision to drop out of school at 16 to pursue acting. (His father, who died in 1995, exacted a promise that Travolta would get his high school equivalency degree. He did.) "I was indulged," he says, "in a very healthy way."

Travolta and Preston similarly cater to their son Jett, 6, who is home-schooled so he can go on location with them. Awed by the potency of the parent-child bond, Travolta says, "I want him always to be cared for. There's new motivation for my career." That bodes well for fans. "John," predicts his Get Shorty costar Dennis Farina, "is only going to get better as he gets older."

Jill Smolowe
Elizabeth Leonard in Los Angeles

• Contributors:
• Elizabeth Leonard.