The Ups And Downs Of John Travolta

Added: 09/22/2007

It is unclear why but it sometimes seems like John Travolta had made a comeback in 1994 with the hit movie Pulp Fiction. In reality Travolta has been working steadily since 1976 when we first were introduced to him as the Boy In The Plastic Bubble. He has had memorable character in movies and on television but there was never any need for a comeback especially because he was always right in front of us.

John Travolta has been acting since he was 18 years old when he had the role of Chuck Benson the very popular television series Emergency!. The 1970’s were very good to John Travolta and maybe people felt that a decade like he had in the 1970’s would be very hard to top because the press forgot all about him in the 1980’s. In 1976 John Travolta starred in a very popular made for television movie called the Boy In The Plastic Bubble where he played a young man with a disease that did not give him the ability to be able to have a normal immune system so even the prospects of getting sick with a common cold could be fatal. Travolta put on a memorable performance and soon he was doing movies that had his face on movie screens all over the world for decades to come.

John Travolta also had a decent sized role in the 1976 horror movie Carrie which helped to keep his name in the minds of movie goers for that whole year. In 1977 John Travolta starred in the hugely successful Saturday Night Fever which was a box office and critical success that jumped John Travolta into the international spotlight as not only a super star actor but he also became known as an accomplished dancer because of the dancing display he put on the movie. The singing and dancing in the 1970’s didn’t stop for John Travolta as in 1978 he starred in yet another huge blockbuster movie and that was the movie Grease. By this time John Travolta was an international superstar and in high demand throughout Hollywood as his name meant big box office sales. His huge success in the movies would make his next move quite a mystery to everyone around him.

In 1978 John Travolta signed on to be Vinny Barbarino in the very successful television series Welcome Back Kotter. Even though the series was a hit it seemed to put a cloud over John Travolta’s career for the 1980’s. Even though he starred in such hit movies as Urban Cowboy, Staying Alive, and Look Who’s Talking in the 1980’s the Hollywood press still put the “Whatever Happened To..” brand on John Travolta and even though it didn’t seem neither fair nor accurate that cloud hung over his head until he broke through the clouds in 1994.

In 1994 John Travolta game an Oscar nominated performance as hit man Vincent Vega in the smash hit Pulp Fiction. Even though John Travolta had been working steadily right up until Pulp Fiction was released, the movie was still called his great comeback and his Academy Award nomination was heralded as just the shot in the arm that his failing career needed.

Failing is a word you would be hard pressed to apply to the career of John Travolta. The two time Oscar nominated actor is still in very high demand to this day and has been part of some huge blockbusters in his career. Recently he took a chance by reviving the role played by cross dresser Divine in the remake of the movie Hairspray but maybe the critics will just look at it as another part of the new comeback of John Travolta, the comeback kid that never seems to go away. The world is always anxious to see how John Travolta will come back next and always holding their breaths to see when he goes away.

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