`It’s good to be king,” Mel Brooks proclaimed in “History of the World–Part I.” These days he might add, “But it’s better to be John Travolta.”
Travolta is leading a charmed life. The 42-year-old actor was famous for personal extravagance even when he was churning out flops such as “The Experts,” “Shout” and “Chains of Gold.” Now he’s getting up to $20 million per movie to work with A-list directors and co-stars while enjoying the resurgent adoration of fans young and old.
And the movies just keep coming: Since last fall Travolta has starred in “White Man’s Burden,” “Get Shorty,” “Broken Arrow” and, coming out Wednesday, “Phenomenon,” a dew-eyed drama in which he plays a small-town car mechanic who’s struck by a flash from the skies and becomes brilliant.
This spring he also completed filming the Nora Ephron comedy “Michael” in Chicago, and then he was off to Paris to star in Roman Polanski’s “The Double”–although he has since bolted from that set in an apparent clash with the director over how his character should be played. (Steve Martin replaced him.)
Still, Travolta has at least two more projects lined up: “Face Off,” an action film helmed by “Broken Arrow” director John Woo and co-starring Nicolas Cage, and “Battlefield Earth,” a science-fiction adventure he is producing that’s based on the novel by Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.
He’s come a long way from the $140,000 he reportedly received for 1994’s “Pulp Fiction” and the previous decade when he had to be upstaged by a talking baby to appear in a hit. Yet, he claims, life hasn’t changed much. “I’m living the same as I’ve always lived,” Travolta says matter-of-factly, leaning back on a couch in a Chicago luxury hotel after wrapping “Michael,” his piercing teal eyes offset by two days’ stubble. “I just feel better living that way.”
Ever since he jumped from TV’s “Welcome Back, Kotter” to late-’70s movie superstardom in “Saturday Night Fever” and “Grease,” that way has been to feast on the fruits of his labors. Stories abound of Travolta flying family members and friends all over the world, embarking on spending sprees and stocking up on airplanes and homes (he currently has three of each).
The Englewood, N.J., native probably turned down more big roles in the 1980s (“American Gigolo,” “Prince of the City,” “Splash”) than he did opportunities to indulge his desires; he passed on “An Officer and a Gentleman” because it conflicted with his pilot-training classes. In one early interview, he said, “There’s no one who likes the pleasures of the body more than I do: food, sex, the works.”
That statement still holds true, Travolta says. “I have to watch what I eat a little more than I used to, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy it as much,” he says, his body boasting a decadent doughiness since his buff peak of 1983’s “Staying Alive.” “I think when you’re younger, you’re preoccupied with the physical a little more than when you get older. You get more interested in things that are outside your immediate physical pleasures, but it doesn’t mean that even if it slows down that you don’t enjoy it when you do it.”
Hence, his role in “Michael” has a familiar ring to it: He plays an angel who visits Earth and indulges in all manner of physical gratification.
Sympathetic–and hot
Taking visible joy in living is a thread linking the actor’s recent, disparate roles: hitman Vincent Vega’s bliss at a heroin hit or $5 milkshake in “Pulp Fiction,” Chili Palmer’s cocky amusement in “Get Shorty,” Vic Deakins’ exuberant madness (“Ain’t it cool?”) in “Broken Arrow,” George Malley’s stop-and-smell-the-roses attitude in “Phenomenon.”
Tribune movie columnist Gene Siskel, who was so enamored of Travolta’s performance in “Saturday Night Fever” that he bought the character’s dancing suit (and recently sold it for a tidy profit), contends that the actor’s current hot streak stems from the innate sympathy he generates, even when playing a supposed bad guy.
“I think what audiences have rediscovered in Travolta’s most recent films is the same special mixture of sweetness and sadness that was present in his earliest work,” Siskel says. “We instinctively root for his seemingly joyful characters to gain even more happiness.”
At one point in “Phenomenon,” Travolta’s character says, “I think I’m what everyone can be. I’m the possibility.”
Likewise, Travolta is the everyman living out our fantasies. It’s a role he’s happy to play.
“I’d like to think that I don’t waste my life, that I live it to the fullest and that I might represent someone that enjoys it and the possibilities of such,” he says, adding: “You have to have enough (money) to survive, but sometimes there’s more pleasure in the minimal things than you think.”
That’s not to say that the money doesn’t come in handy. “It makes you be able to afford what you’ve been doing more comfortably,” he says. “I support a lot of people, my family, my friends. Some work for me, some don’t, and I still take care of them.”
He adds that he also gives to charities that promote drug-rehabilitation, the rainforest, the cleanup of radioactivity-contaminated food in Russia, cancer and AIDS research, and programs for the learning disabled.
“It’s hard when you’re a celebrity, and you’re known for being wealthy, let’s say, to exemplify pleasures on the small side,” he says. “But the joy my son gives me by smiling or giving me a hug or a kiss is as big a joy as anything that costs.”
His son, with wife Kelly Preston, is 4-year-old Jett, named for dad’s hobby. The three of them shuttle between homes in Maine, Florida and Los Angeles. When “Michael” was on location in Austin, Texas, each weekend Travolta would get in one of his planes and fly to L.A. to be with them.
These moments of togetherness are important because, at least before his premature exit from “The Double,” Travolta had scheduled little down time. His current credo would seem to be “Strike while the iron is hot” or “I won’t need another comeback if I never go away.”
“I’m taking advantage of the moment,” he says. “When I was younger I might not have taken advantage because I wanted to play more, live my life more, but I’m old enough now to know that it’s time to go to work.
“If you’re doing parts where if you don’t do them, (Jack) Nicholson wants to do them or Anthony Hopkins, that’s a big deal. Those are good parts and the best scripts, and why would you not take advantage of that? It may not be there in a couple of years, especially if you keep saying no.”
He views his current professional pinnacle as even higher than the first one. Before, he says, he was “the best thing” in most of his movies; now he’s co-starring alongside Gene Hackman (“Get Shorty”) or Robert Duvall (“Phenomenon”).
What’s more, these Oscar winners conformed themselves to Travolta’s loosey-goosey working methods. “(Duvall and I) just fooled around a lot more than I thought we were going to, which I really loved,” he says. “I did that with Gene Hackman, too. I really was thrilled that these credible, solid-state actors were willing to play my kind of approach toward acting, where they’re more lighthearted between scenes.”
Duvall, the wise town doctor in “Phenomenon,” says Travolta impressed him as well. “He surprised me a little,” Duvall says. “He’s an excellent actor. A lot of actors you watch and it’s `OK,’ but with him you just say `Wow’–you get sucked in, it has a certain sense of truth.”
Kyra Sedgwick, who plays the elusive love interest, also appreciated Travolta’s “truthful” quality, though she could be unnerved by his antics. “During one of the very, very emotional scenes, he started going into Bette Davis imitations and Barbara Stanwyck, and I said, `What are you doing? I’m tearing myself apart here.’ But that’s just the way he works.”
Thanks to L. Ron
Another difference between Travolta’s second stint with superstardom and the first go-round is the current omnipresence of mass media. Entertainment/celebrity coverage has become all encompassing, yet strangely enough, Travolta theorizes, it allows him to make more movies without risking overexposure.
He tells of being stopped on the street in January 1990 by a man who asked “Where have you been?”–even though he’d seen “Look Who’s Talking” when it came out the previous October. “I think the moviegoing audience eats it up like that,” Travolta says. “If the last movie I had done was `Pulp Fiction,’ I’d be in trouble.”
One facet of his life that Travolta says is remarkably unchanged is the reception he gets from everyday people. “I’m so thrilled about it,” he says. “It’s funny, the new generation has responded to me the same way their parents did or their brothers and sisters did.”
Travolta reports having talked to director Steven Spielberg about directing him and Barbra Streisand in a musical–which might placate those calling for him to revive his singing career. He’s doubtful about becoming a director himself–“I can barely get enough sleep as an actor”–but has no qualms about producing “Battlefield Earth,” even if doing so will draw attention to his connection with Scientology.
“Yeah, but so what? I don’t care,” Travolta says. “I like the book.”
Travolta has followed Scientology since 1975 and credits it with helping him recover from the cancer death of lover Diana Hyland and steering him from self-destructive paths. Scientology also claims Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, Kirstie Alley and Preston as believers, but many critics consider the quasi-religion to be a coercive cult.
Travolta says he has experienced no backlash from his support of Scientology, including his thanking the late L. Ron Hubbard in his Golden Globes acceptance speech for “Get Shorty” in January. He adds that “Battlefield Earth” is a science-fiction novel that has nothing to do with the belief system.
“It’s set a thousand years in the future; it’s about mutants and all sorts of fun `Star Wars’-type things,” he says. “If someone wanted to cross the concepts (with Scientology) once they saw the movie, you’d say, `Where? Oh, the mutant that almost attacked the bad guy? Oh yeah, that correlates.’ “
Actress Amy Irving, who calls Travolta “one of the sweetest guys on earth,” remembers his spiritual training coming in handy at least once as they filmed 1976’s “Carrie.”
“He used to use Scientology to get my headache away,” she says. “He learned this trick about concentration, and it worked.”
Despite the considerable amenities in his life, Travolta insists that being an actor is more important than being a star. “An actor, changing characters, that’s my thing,” he says. “If I had to nutshell it, being a character actor, being a pilot specifically are things that I like about my life. Being a father to my son. Being a decent husband to my wife.
“Being a star, I guess early on there was some kind of excitement to seeing myself on the cover of a magazine. Soon you realize that it’s not about that. It’s about `Does that promote the good works that you’ve been doing.’ “
