Benjamin Travolta

John Joseph Travolta (born February 18, 1954) is an American actor.

Travolta began acting in television before transitioning into a leading man in films.

His accolades include a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award, in addition to nominations for two Academy Awards and a BAFTA Award.

Travolta attended Dwight Morrow High School, but dropped out as a junior at age 17 in 1971.

After dropping out of school, Travolta moved across the Hudson River to New York City and landed a role in the touring company of the musical Grease and on Broadway in Over Here!, singing the Sherman Brothers' song "Dream Drummin'".

He then moved to Los Angeles for professional reasons.

Travolta's first screen role in California was as a fall victim in Emergency! (Season 2, Episode 2) in September, 1972, but his first significant movie role was as Billy Nolan, a bully who was goaded into playing a prank on Sissy Spacek's character in the horror film Carrie (1976) directed by Brian De Palma.

Travolta came to prominence starring in the sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975–1979), followed by leading roles in Carrie (1976), Grease (1978), Urban Cowboy (1980), and Blow Out (1981).

He was raised Catholic, but later converted to Scientology in 1975 at age 21.

Around that time, he landed his star-making role as Vinnie Barbarino in the ABC TV sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975–1979), in which his sister, Ellen, also occasionally appeared (as Arnold Horshack's mother).

Travolta had a hit single titled "Let Her In", peaking at number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in July 1976.

He earned nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his roles in Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Pulp Fiction (1994).

In the next few years, he starred in the television movie The Boy in the Plastic Bubble and two of his most noted screen roles: Tony Manero in the dance drama Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Danny Zuko in the musical Grease (1978).

The films were among the most commercially successful pictures of the decade and catapulted Travolta to international stardom.

Saturday Night Fever earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor, making him, at age 24, one of the youngest performers ever nominated for the Best Actor Oscar.

His mother and his sister Ann appeared very briefly in Saturday Night Fever and his sister Ellen played a waitress in Grease.

Travolta performed on the Grease soundtrack album.

His albums have typically accompanied films he has starred in, such as Grease: The Original Soundtrack from the Motion Picture (1978)–which topped the Billboard 200.

Travolta is also a private pilot.

The youngest of six children, Travolta was born and raised in Englewood, New Jersey, an inner-ring suburb of New York City in Bergen County, New Jersey.

His father, Salvatore "Sam" Travolta was a semiprofessional American football player turned tire salesman and partner in a tire company, Travolta Tire Exchange.

His mother, Helen Cecilia (née Burke) was 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.

His siblings Joey, Ellen, Ann, Margaret, and Sam Travolta were all inspired by their mother's love of theatre and drama and became actors.

His father was a second-generation Italian American with roots in Godrano, Sicily, and his mother was Irish American.

He grew up in an Irish-American neighborhood and said that his household was predominantly Irish in culture.

After the failure of the romance Moment by Moment (1978) in which he starred with Lily Tomlin, Travolta rebounded in 1980, riding a nationwide country music craze that followed on the heels of his hit film Urban Cowboy, in which he starred with Debra Winger.

Travolta followed up Urban Cowboy with a starring role in Brian De Palma's 1981 film Blow Out, which was critically lauded but a box office disappointment, likely due to its bleak ending.

After Blow Out came a series of commercial and critical failures which sidelined Travolta's acting career.

These included Two of a Kind (1983), a romantic comedy reuniting him with Olivia Newton-John, and Perfect (1985), co-starring Jamie Lee Curtis.

He also starred in Staying Alive, the 1983 sequel to Saturday Night Fever, for which he trained rigorously to portray a professional dancer and lost 20 pounds; the film was a financial success, grossing over $65 million, though it, too, was scorned by critics.

During that time, Travolta was offered, but declined, lead roles in what would become box-office hits, including American Gigolo and An Officer and a Gentleman, both of which went to Richard Gere, as well as Splash, which went to Tom Hanks.

In 1989, Travolta starred with Kirstie Alley in Look Who's Talking, which grossed $297 million, making it his most successful film since Grease.

He subsequently starred in Look Who's Talking Too (1990) and Look Who's Talking Now (1993), but it was not until he played against type as Vincent Vega in Quentin Tarantino's hit Pulp Fiction (1994), with Samuel L. Jackson, for which he received an Academy Award nomination, that his career was revived.

It was Travolta's third film alongside Bruce Willis.

His other notable films include Get Shorty (1995), Broken Arrow (1996), Michael (1996), Face/Off (1997), A Civil Action (1998), Primary Colors (1998), The General's Daughter (1999), Wild Hogs (2007), Hairspray (2007), Bolt (2008), and Savages (2012).

Travolta returned to television portraying lawyer Robert Shapiro in the series The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story.

He received a Primetime Emmy Award as a producer as well as nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie.

He was also Emmy-nominated for his role in the comedy short Die Hart (2021).

Outside of acting, Travolta is also a singer-songwriter.

He has released nine albums, including four singles that have charted on the Billboard Hot 100's Top 40.