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Wikipedia
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, Kotterand 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 inSaturday 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.
Early life
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. His siblings areJoey, Ellen, Ann, Margaret, and Sam Travolta. Travolta's father was a second-generation Italian American and his mother was Irish American;[4][5] he grew up in an Irish-American neighborhood and has said that his household was predominantly Irish in culture.[6][7] He was raised Roman Catholic.[5][8]
Early career
After attending Dwight Morrow High School,[9] 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'".[10][11] 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,[12] 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).[13] 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).[14]
'70s stardom
Around this time, Travolta had a hit single entitled "Let Her In" peaking at number ten on theBillboard Hot 100 chart.[15][16] 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.[17] Saturday Night Fever earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.[18] At age 24, Travolta became one of the youngest performers ever nominated for the Best Actor Oscar.[19] His mother and his sister Ann appeared as extras inSaturday Night Fever and his sister Ellen appeared as a waitress in Grease. Travolta performed several of the songs on the Grease soundtrack album.[20] 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.[21]
Downturn
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[22] and An Officer and a Gentleman, both of which went to Richard Gere.[23]
Resurgence
In 1989 Travolta starred in Look Who's Talking, which grossed $297,000,000, making it his most successful film since Grease. Travolta continued to the 2 sequels Look Who's Talking Too (1990) and Look Who's Talking Now (1993). But 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.[24][25] 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).
2000–present
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.[26] Travolta played Mrs. Edna Turnblad in the remake of Hairspray, his first musical since Grease.[27]
Personal life
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.[28]
Travolta married actress Kelly Preston in 1991. The couple had a son, Jett (1992-2009).[29] 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,[30] later confirmed to be a boy.[31] Their son, Benjamin, was born on November 23, 2010 in Florida.[32]
Travolta and Preston have regularly attended marriage counseling; Travolta admits that therapy has helped the marriage.[33]
Travolta is a certified private 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.[34] 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.[35]
Travolta has been a practitioner of Scientology since 1975 when he was given the book Dianetics while filming the movie The Devil's Rain inDurango, Mexico.[36] 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.[37]
In June 2010, Travolta and Preston donated $10,000 to the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund while on a trip to South Africa.[38]
Son's death
On January 2, 2009, Travolta and Preston's son, Jett, died while on their holiday vacation in The Bahamas.[39][40] A Bahamian death certificate was issued, attributing the cause of death to a seizure.[41] Jett, who had a history of seizures,[42] reportedly suffered fromKawasaki disease as an infant.[43] On September 24, 2009, long a source of speculation,[44] Travolta and Preston confirmed that their son had autism and suffered regular seizures.[45] They made their statements while giving a testimony after a multi-million dollar extortion plot against them regarding the circumstances of their son's death.
On January 23, 2009, three people were arrested in The Bahamas in relation to the plot.[46] It is believed that the plot centered around a "refusal to transport" document allegedly signed by Travolta and Preston when paramedics arrived to treat their son, that a police spokesman noted did not apply in the Travolta case.[47] One of the people arrested, Obie Wilchcombe, a Member of The Bahamian Parliament and former Bahamian Minister of Tourism, was described as a "close friend" of Travolta and Preston.[46] The other two people allegedly involved areEmergency Medical Technician (EMT) Tarino Lightbourne, and then-Senator Pleasant Bridgewater, who was charged with Abetment to Extort and Conspiracy to Extort.[46] Bridgewater resigned from the Senate as a result of the allegations.[48]
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