Dressed in a three-piece tailored bench suit with pants fitted at the top and flared at the bottom and his right arm pointing towards the enormous mirror ball hanging from the ceiling: he is the image of Tony Manero, an icon of the seventies who marked a way of dance. That character from the movie Saturday Night Fever elevated John Travolta to fame and gave him the first of the two Oscar nominations he has had. That young man, who believed himself to be the king of disco, is celebrating 70 years of a life marked by success, dance, and also tragedy.
John Joseph Travolta was born on February 18, 1954 in New Jersey, although his grandparents were from Palermo. The youngest of six brothers showed a talent for acting from a very young age, and at the age of 16 he left school to pursue his dream. In 1975 he was cast in The Devil's Rain. It was the second audition he attended, and although the horror film passed unnoticed, it marked his life as he met the actress Joan Prather, who introduced him to Scientology, of which he is an active member.
The following year he filmed Carrie, a success although his role was secondary, and the television film The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, where he began a relationship with his co-star, Diana Hyland, 18 years older than him. The relationship was tragically cut short after a few months due to cancer.
Travolta overcame this hard blow thanks to dancing. Producer Robert Stigwood offered him to star in Saturday Night Fever and after hard physical training and many hours locked in a dance studio, the budding actor also became a dancer, a label that would accompany him forever, especially after the enormous success of the disco movie with a soundtrack by the Bee Gees, released in the United States in December 1977.
Just six months later, in June 1978, Travolta returned to the big screen with a bigger hit, if possible, Grease, whose musical numbers have marked many generations, and which he already knew because he had participated in some performances when he was just a child. Broadway musical. Also thanks to that film he met Olivia Newton-John, who became one of his best friends until she died in 2022.
But after Grease his career fell into decline, with the exception of Look Who's Talking and its sequels, which were a box office success, until Tarantino and another dance changed his fortunes. It was in 1994 and the director chose Travolta to play Vincent Vega, a hitman who has to take care of Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman), the wife of his boss. The film won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and Travolta earned his second Oscar nomination. But if there is something for which the film is remembered, it is for the twist (Your never can tell, by Chuck Berry) that Travolta and Thurman danced. Since then, the film successes have been added: Phenomenon, The Thin Red Line, Primary Colors, Hairspray and Pelham Train Assault, among others.
On a personal level, at the end of the eighties, when his career was going from failure to failure, he met the actress Kelly Preston, whom he married in 1991 and who he widowed almost 4 years ago. They had three children: Jett (1992), Ella (2000) and Benjamin (2010). Tragedy struck them in 2009 when their eldest, who suffered from Kawasaki disease, died while on vacation in the Bahamas. Now Travolta lives dedicated to his two youngest children and to aviation. He is a pilot and has a fleet of five planes, including a Boeing 707, which is parked at his Florida home, Jumbolair, which has a landing strip.
Last week the actor was involved in a controversy in Italy, at the Sanremo festival, where he appeared as a guest star and was forced to dance Los pajaritos, a scene in which he looked ridiculous and that is why RAI was forced to eliminate it. Fortunately, as a memory, outside of the big screen, we will always have the elegance of the actor, in the White House, in November 1985, dancing with Diana of Wales, at the request of Nancy Reagan. A few days ago Prince Henry remembered that moment of his mother receiving the title of Living Legend of Aviation from Travolta.
