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| Birth Name(s) : John Joseph Travolta |
Date of Birth: February 18, 1954 |
| Status:
Married
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Partner:
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| Profession:
Actor |
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Full John Travolta Biography
Smooth-talking Vinnie Barbarino on the TV series "Welcome Back Kotter" (1975) was John Travolta's introduction to fame. His flashy leisure suit and hot disco moves gained him accolation in "Saturday Night Fever" (1977) and "Grease" (1978), opposite Olivia Newton-John remains a favorite of many today.
The early 80s saw Travolta take a break with light dramas and TV movies. "Look Who's Talking" (1989) launched a comeback making gems like "Pulp Fiction" (1994) and "Get Shorty" (1995) possible. |
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Additional John Travolta Biography
Travolta, youngest of six children, and Helen Cecilia (née Burke), 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. She was 42 when Travolta was born. Travolta's father was a second-generation Italian American and his mother was Irish American; Travolta grew up in an Irish-American neighborhood and has said that his household was predominantly Irish in culture. His family was Catholic.
After dropping out of Dwight Morrow High School after his junior year, Travolta moved to New York City to get a job as a performer. He landed a role in the touring company of Grease (musical) and on Broadway in Over Here! singing the Sherman Brothers' song "Dream Drummin'.'" Travolta also cut singles for a local record company, but the songs were quickly forgotten. But eventually, he moved to Los Angeles to further his career in show business.
Travolta's first television role was as a fall victim in Emergency! (S2E2) in Sept. 1972, but his first major movie role as Billy Nolan, a bully who played a prank on Sissy Spacek's Carrie White 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). (Travolta also had appeared in various TV commercials during this time span, appearing in ads for Band-Aid, Haggar Slacks and Mony Insurance among others.)Travolta in one of his earliest roles, in The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976)
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. 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.
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 in Face/Off (1997), a desperate attorney in A Civil Action (1998) and a military detective in The General's Daughter (1999).Travolta signing copies of Battlefield Earth, 2000
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 converted to 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 workaholic with a bad hairpiece turned biker in 2007's Wild Hogs. Travolta plays Edna Turnblad in the remake of Hairspray, his first musical since Grease.
Travolta married actress Kelly Preston in 1991. They have a son named Jett, and a daughter named Ella Bleu.
Travolta is a certified pilot and owns five airplanes, including an ex-Australian Boeing 707-138 airliner. The plane bears the name Jett Clipper Ella in honour of his son Jett and his daughter Ella.Captain Travolta as the "Goodwill Ambassador for Qantas Airways" in front of his private Boeing 707-138 Decemeber 2006.
Pan Am was a large operator of the Boeing 707 and used Clipper in their names. The 707 aircraft bears the marks of Qantas, as Travolta acts as an official goodwill ambassador for the airline wherever he flies. His US$4.9 million estate in the Jumbolair subdivision in Ocala, Florida is situated on Greystone Airport with its own runway and taxiway right to the door.
John Travolta has been a practitioner of Scientology since 1975 when he was given the book Dianetics while filming a movie in Durango, Mexico. |
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John Travolta Quote(s)
| I wanted to work with DePalma. I knew the film would be interesting and attract a lot of attention." - about his role in Carrie (1976) |
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