John Travolta could have been Richard Gere.
But his career, like his life, has always had a slightly erratic, somewhat unfocused quality, that of that hangover sadness that comes after one, or several, bursts of joy.
In his work, more than talent, it has been a matter of stumbling decision-making, probably of failed advice.
Personally, the simple bad luck that accompanies a person, whether unknown or ultra-famous, has crossed his path several times.
In fact, too many.
Travolta could have been Gere, but also whatever he would have wanted.
Now that the actor turns 70 this Sunday, he may look back and be happy or regret his triumphs and mistakes.
He will surely review those four dances that have marked his career: those from
Saturday Night Fever
(1977),
Grease
(1978),
Pulp Fiction
(1994) and
Hairspray
(2007).
They have defined his career, one from which he seems partially retired.
His two children, his planes and some of those dance performances that made him become who he is are his greatest interest.
Just a few days ago, he made some moves in the middle of the Sanremo festival.
The old glory danced, to the disbelief of half of Italy,
The Little Birds
, and the performance was so surprising, bordering on the ridiculous, that he himself has not given permission to Italian television to reproduce it again.
Seen and unseen.
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John Travolta and Olivia Newton John, an eternal friendship of four decades
It is these types of gestures that have forged the legend of the somewhat diminished Hollywood star.
His career has always been intertwined with personal, sentimental and religious issues, which have made him the subject of the tabloids more frequently than he probably would have liked.
The seventies of the last century were his peak moment, thanks to the two films for which he will go down in posterity, in which he had a lot to do.
Thanks to his success in
Saturday Night Fever
and the three-picture contract he had signed with the Paramount studio, he entered
Grease
, and had the power to choose his co-star.
And he insisted that it be Olivia Newton-John who played the sweet Sandy, a high school girl at the time 28 years old.
They raised more than $350 million.
“She couldn't have made the movie if she hadn't met John, because she wasn't sure about doing it.
"He convinced me," she declared a few years ago at a gala.
That even changed the story, because the actress failed to Americanize her Australian accent and the script turned her into a new girl at school, no longer the force of the American class differences of the fifties that were in the original theatrical script. .
In return, she thanked him all her life.
And he became part of the family.
“When you share a success as meteoric as that, impossible to surpass, there is a bond that always remains,” reflected Travolta during the multiple celebrations for the 40th anniversary of the musical feature film.
“I have been by her side during the birth of her daughter, her divorce, when she lost her sister.
And she the same, during my marriage, my children.
“A lot of shared memories.”
Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta at a party for the 40th anniversary of the film 'Grease', in Beverly Hills, California, in August 2018. Alberto E. Rodriguez (Getty Images)
Travolta and Newton-John were close friends throughout their lives, until her death two years ago.
They shared not only the filming of
Grease
, but the global bomb that it became and continued to be for decades, they traveled together to hundreds of events related to the film and, even, both of them gave it to the actress's second husband, who did not I had never seen her before, on a flight on Travolta's plane, with him piloting.
Losing the performer, who went through two breast cancers, was the fourth and last big hardship in the actor's life.
The first was when he was very young and he was practically widowed for the first, and not last, time.
The second half of the seventies were key for him, thanks to his unexpected success in
The Boy in the Plastic Bubble
, in 1976, since from there came the opportunity in
Saturday Night Fever
, a year later, which earned him the Eternal glory and a first Oscar nomination.
He was barely 22 years old with that first successful television movie when, in the middle of filming and in a matter of a few weeks, he fell in love with the already established actress who played his mother, Diana Hyland, 40. They were at their best and their worst.
In 1975 they discovered that she had breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy which she performed in time.
They intended to move in together, get married.
But on Christmas 1976 the illness returned.
On March 27, 1977, at the age of 41, Hyland died.
He had just turned 23.
Diana Hyland and John Travolta, at a gala in November 1976.Rue des Archives (Credit ©Rue des Archives/AGIP / Cordon Press)
Then Travolta began to fly alone, to soar.
Fever
arrived ...
,
Grease
, the hits.
She was offered
American Gigolo
and
An Officer and a Gentleman,
which Gere finally won.
At the end of the eighties she turned to comedy with
Look Who's Talking
, in which the now deceased Kirstie Alley said on more than one occasion that she fell madly in love with him, but that she didn't take the plunge because she didn't want to betray her. her husband.
Furthermore, the actor had his sights set on another goal.
In 1989 he met actress Kelly Preston, a newcomer, recently divorced from her first husband, on the set of
The Experts
, and two years later they married.
She was already pregnant.
They were good times.
Pulp Fiction
(1994) earned him his second Oscar nomination, came
Phenomenon, Face to Face, Primary Colors
... His children were also born, Jett in 1992, and Ella, in 2000. Jett had health problems from a very young age, and At only two years old he was diagnosed with the so-called Kawasaki syndrome, which causes arterial inflammation;
In addition, he suffered from seizures and was on the autism spectrum, an illness that Scientology, the religion that the family professes and to which the actor has been faithful since 1975, does not accept or contemplate.
John Travolta and Kelly Preston, at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. ANNE-CHRISTINE POUJOULAT (AFP via Getty Images)
In 2009, during the Travolta-Preston family's Christmas vacation in the Bahamas, Jett suffered one of those attacks in the bathroom and hit a bathtub.
The paramedics tried to revive him, took him to a hospital and there he died.
He was 16 years old.
“Scientology saved us from that.
Our family and friends too,” Preston said almost a decade later in an interview with EL PAÍS in Cannes.
"And the weather".
“When something like this happens, it either complicates the relationship or your relationship helps you move forward,” the actress explained then.
“I think we both tried to bear the pain as best we could.
It was a moment when it was very difficult to look at each other, because if one was wrong… but the strength of our relationship helped us.”
They soon wanted to overcome the loss of Jett with another child, and almost three years later Preston gave birth to Ben.
And they worked together again, in
Gotti
, playing a couple of gangsters.
The couple and their strong union were Travolta's mainstay for almost 30 years.
Until in July 2020, Preston passed away.
She was 57 years old.
History repeated itself, and breast cancer ended the love of her life, whom she continues to remember on her Instagram account on the indicated dates.
The actress had been ill for two years, although very few knew it.
He asked for privacy and forgiveness for moving away, and took refuge in his children and his friends, like Newton-John, who after Preston's death and after his two phases with cancer decided to create a foundation to fight the disease.
He would die two years later, at 73.
This last five years has not been easy for Travolta.
As he himself announced, his children have been a refuge and consolation; it is with his family that he feels “at peace,” as he told this newspaper a decade ago.
Also with his planes;
Two years ago he got his license to fly Boeing 737s, so he could become a commercial flight pilot.
Although with 250 million in the bank, almost 100 films (and some yet to come) and two children almost raised, he probably prefers tranquility.