The Big Picture

• John Travolta's career seemed unstoppable after his success in the late '70s and early '80s, but it quickly declined after the commercial failure of Blow Out.
• Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction resurrected Travolta's career, showcasing his talent and range as an actor.
• Despite setbacks, including the disaster of Battlefield Earth, Travolta's career may be on the brink of another comeback, with recent appearances in short films and TV series.

In the late 1970s, few actors were more popular than John Travolta. With his good looks, slicked-back hair, chiseled chin, and impressive dance moves, Travolta showed that he could do it all and looked to be Hollywood’s next big leading man. And for a little while he was. After establishing himself in the TV series Welcome Back, Kotter and a small role in Brian DePalma’s Carrie, Travolta shot to superstardom thanks to his dual performances in 1977’s Saturday Night Fever and 1978’s Grease. Travolta became the epitome of cool and confident. He had charisma, he could act, he could sing, he could dance. There was nothing that would stop him from being the biggest star in the world, it seemed.

The early 80s didn’t start out so badly for John Travolta either. 1980 gave us Urban Cowboy, another hit that centered around country music and mechanical bull riding. Arguably, what could have been Travolta’s most important role came in 1981, when he reconnected with DePalma and Nancy Allen from Carrie for the thriller Blow Out. It gave Travolta a chance to expand and do something outside his comfort zone. Here, his good looks, dancing skills, and singing ability didn’t matter. Though it wasn’t a big hit like previous films, it was well done and went on to become a cult favorite.

'Blow Out' Showed That John Travolta Could Do More Than Sing and Dance

Looking back on it, that was the time Travolta should have looked to set his career on a different path than it had been on. Who he had been in the '70s had a short shelf life as he got older, but after Blow Out’s commercial failure, Travolta went back to what was safe, next appearing in 1983’s Staying Alive, a Saturday Night Fever sequel directed by Sylvester Stallone. Critics hated it, but that didn't matter — the public showed up at the theater en masse anyway. That turned out to be the last hit of Travolta’s early career. After that, his career seemed to nosedive.

There was Perfect in 1985 with Jamie Lee Curtis, a forgettable film only remembered for Curtis’ dance scenes. It would be four years before we saw Travolta in movie theaters again. When we did, he was no longer the lead — a talking baby was. 1989’s Look Who’s Talking was a fun film that follows the inner monologue (voiced by Bruce Willis) of a baby’s life, but it wasn’t about Travolta. They could’ve gotten anyone to play the new boyfriend to Kirstie Alley’s single mom character. Still, the film was a success, and spawned two sequels, Look Who’s Talking Too and Look Who’s Talking Now. It kept Travolta’s name out there but at a cost — he was no longer the cool John Travolta from the '70s, but the "has been" who was now in the talking baby movies.

Quentin Tarantino's 'Pulp Fiction' Allowed John Travolta To Show Off His Range

Enter Quentin Tarantino. In the early '90s, Tarantino was the new quirky cool kid in Hollywood, hitting it big by writing and directing Reservoir Dogs and writing True Romance. His unique way of storytelling was refreshing at a time when so many movies were shiny objects lacking any real dirt and grit. He was the perfect choice to resurrect Travolta’s career with a role that was simultaneously unlike anything he had ever done, while also right up his alley. Travolta wasn’t Tarantino’s first pick for the suave hitman, Vinnie Vega. That would have been Michael Madsen, who said no because he was saying yes to Wyatt Earp instead. But then Tarantino and Travolta went to lunch, and the director realized that Travolta would be perfect for the role. Plus, as he said in an interview, “John’s always been one of my favorite actors. It made me a little sad that the work he’d done in the last five years hasn’t reflected the actor of his talent.”

Watching Travolta in 1994’s Pulp Fiction, you would have thought the role was written with him in mind; that’s how seamlessly he makes it his own. With his long black hair and black suit, Travolta looked cool again. There was his little dance scene with Uma Thurman to show that he had never lost his old moves, and his chemistry with co-star Samuel L. Jackson was palpable. There was also that acting range, which is more subtle and quiet, and not a smiling and charming ladies' man. With one role, Travolta showed that he still had all the talent in the world if he was only given a chance.

Suddenly, Travolta was a big name again. Talking babies were forgotten. The career that had gone off the rails a decade before was back on track. It only continued to get bigger the next year with Barry Sonnenfeld’s Get Shorty, which Travolta won a Golden Globe for. Over the last half of the decade, he had a number of notable hits, such as Broken Arrow, Phenomenon, Michael, Face/Off, Primary Colors, and A Civil Action. None of them typecast him as a dancer or a hitman. He played everything from an action star to an angel, a politician, and a lawyer. John Travolta was now fully living up to his potential and then some. Then he made one huge and horrible misstep.

'Battlefield Earth' Saw John Travolta's String of Hits Come to a Humiliating End

As successful as Travolta was in the latter half of the 1990s, the 2000s saw his career fall off dramatically thanks to the release of Battlefield Earth. Based on a novel written by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, the bizarre sci-fi flick saw Travolta, a noted Scientologist, in some hilariously bad makeup. To say that it bombed is an understatement. The film earned Travolta two Razzies and performed so horribly that it became a punchline. It was made fun of relentlessly and quickly regarded as one of the worst films ever made.

The second chance that Travolta had rightfully earned with his charisma and acting ability was gone in a flash. Travolta had taken the career resurgence handed to him and squandered it by flying too close to the sun and assuming that an outlandish film would work just because everything else was. Suddenly, everything was much worse than just being known as the guy who played second fiddle to talking babies. People were talking more about his religious affiliations than his work.

The image Travolta had crafted for himself was destroyed. That doesn’t mean that his career completely fell off the cliff. He tried to salvage it with follow-ups like Swordfish and Domestic Disturbance, which were okay, but the shine on the rebuilt toy had worn off. The last decade or so has seen him slumming it in horribly forgettable direct-to-video movies. He had to fend off allegations of sexual assault (which were later dropped) and then was relentlessly razzed for calling singer Idina Menzel "Adele Dazeem" at the 2014 Academy Awards. He was dismissed as a goof — a label he didn’t deserve. On top of that, Travolta went through two devastating personal tragedies, first losing his son Jett at the age of 16 in 2009, then saying goodbye to his wife of 29 years, Kelly Preston, when she died of cancer in 2020.

John Travolta Could Be on the Brink of Another Comeback

Partially because of the loss he’s endured, or maybe because society has realized how cruel they could be to an actor who gave us so much entertainment, the stance on Travolta has softened in recent years. Battlefield Earth was from a different era. He was able to laugh about his Oscars flub. He accepted his hair loss and shaved his head. There was that hilarious Super Bowl commercial for T-Mobile that paid tribute to Grease and had him singing and dancing with Zach Braff and Donald Faison. This past Christmas season, he topped it with a T-Mobile ad as a dancing Santa Claus. He is more than happy nostalgia, though; Travolta's acting career is beginning to pick back up as well. He has the 2023 short film The Shepherd, which he co-produced with Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuarón, and he also starred in the first season of Kevin Hart's Quibi series Die Hart, which was recut into a feature film on Amazon Prime Video.

In a time when everything feels so fragile and distant, we rely more and more on our sense of nostalgia. John Travolta was there, in the '70s, the '80s, the '90s, and even the 2000s. He got a second chance three decades ago. Maybe he has a huge third act in him. Perhaps someone like Tarantino or a bright up-and-coming director will give him a chance with the perfect role. Until then, even if he squandered his gift once, John Travolta will still be remembered as one of the most loved actors ever, no matter what happens for the rest of his career.

Pulp Fiction is available to stream on Max in the U.S.

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