John Joseph Travolta (born February 18, 1954) is an Academy Award-nominated and Golden Globe Award-winning American actor, dancer, and singer, best known for his leading roles in films such as Saturday Night Fever, Grease and Pulp Fiction.

Travolta, the youngest of six children, was born in Englewood, New Jersey, the son of Salvatore Travolta, a semi-professional football player turned tire salesman and partner in a tire company, 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.)

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.

After Urban Cowboy came a string of flops that sidelined his acting career. 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, were all commercial disasters severely beaten up by critics. Some suggest that he was typecast as a disco stud or 1970s icon, which could be the reason his agent intervened on several occasions to turn down acting roles. During that time he was offered, but turned down, lead roles in what would become box office hits, including American Gigolo, An Officer and a Gentleman, Splash and Fatal Attraction. Disenchanted, Travolta pursued flying and eventually earned his license to command aircraft. His only hit film was Look Who's Talking with Kirstie Alley and a baby voiced by Bruce Willis.

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), 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. 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 successful businessman gone broke/ 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. 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.

In 1992, he wrote and illustrated a short children's book entitled Propeller One-Way Night Coach about the fictional journey of an 8-year-old boy named Jeff across the USA in the 1950s.

Travolta was previously involved with actress Diana Hyland, who died of breast cancer in 1977.

John Travolta has been a practitioner of Scientology since 1975 when he was given the book Dianetics while filming a movie in Durango, Mexico.

*Hairspray (2007) US$14 million including ca. US$3 million perquisites *Ladder 49 (2004) US$20 million *Primary Colors (1998) US$18 million *Mad City (1997) US$17 million *Face/Off (1997) US$15 million

*Michael (1996) US$15 million *Phenomenon (film) (1996) US$18 million *Broken Arrow (1996 film) (1996) US$17 million *Get Shorty (film) (1995) US$3.5 million *Pulp Fiction (1994) US$140,000

*The Tenth Level (1975) *Welcome Back, Kotter (cast member from 1975 - 1978)   *The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976)

*Basements (1987) *Chains of Gold (1991) (also writer) *Punk'd (2004) (Uncredited)

*Over Here! (Original Cast Album) (1974) *John Travolta (1976) *Can't Let You Go (1977) *Travolta Fever (1978) *Grease (movie soundtrack) (1978) *The Road to Freedom (Scientology album) (1986) *Let Her In: The Best of John Travolta (1996) *The Collection (2003) *Hairspray (2007)

* "You Set My Dreams To Music" (1969) * "Goodnight Mr. Moon" (1969) * "Rainbows" (1969) * "Settle Down" (1970) * "Moonlight Lady" (1971) * "Right Time Of The Night" (1972) * "Big Trouble" (1972) * "What Would They Say" (1973) * "Back Doors Crying" (1973) * "Dream Drummin'" (1974) * "Easy Evil" (1975) * "Can't Let You Go" (1975) * "Let Her In" (1976) * "Slow Dancin'" (1976) * "It Had To Be You" (1976) * "I Don't Know What I Like About You Baby" (1976) * "Baby, I Could Be So Good At Lovin' You" (1977) * "Razzamatazz" (1977) * "Sandy" (1978) * "Greased Lightnin'" (1978) * "Never Gonna Fall In Love Again" (1980) * "Hooker Madness" (1983)

* Brigitte Tast (ed.) John Travolta (Hildesheim/Germany 1978) ISBN 3-88842-103-9.

*John Travolta official homepage *

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