John Travolta at Cannes: from Saturday Night Fever to Pulp Fiction, the winding path of a legend

He is one of the few representatives from Hollywood at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. John Travolta will walk the red carpet at the Palais des Festivals this Friday, May 15, to present Night Flight to Los Angeles, his directorial debut, which will be released on Apple TV+ on May 29. A personal work, it recounts the night he fell in love with airplanes as a child during an unforgettable first flight—a passion that has never left him, as he still owns a Dassault Falcon 900B, a Boeing 737, and a small Eclipse 500 jet. The actor has just put his Florida villa, complete with a runway at the end of the garden, on the market for $10 million.

From the explosion of popularity to the period of decline, via Tarantino

In 1977, the 24-year-old actor, from a large family in New Jersey, was propelled to global superstardom thanks to Saturday Night Fever. His character, Tony Manero, a modest Italian-American office worker who became the king of the disco scene, became the symbol of a generation finally liberated from the Vietnam War. The soundtrack, composed primarily by the Bee Gees, sold 40 million copies. The film grossed $237 million on an estimated initial budget of $3 million. "I made Saturday Night Fever thinking it was just a little art-house thing. I can't understand what's happening," he confessed to the New York Times in 1979. The following year, Grease, with Olivia Newton-John, further amplified the phenomenon. Then came the long dry spell of the 1980s—bad roles, poor choices, turning down roles in An Officer and a Gentleman, Midnight Express, and Forrest Gump. The only gem from this period was Brian De Palma's Blow Out, which went unnoticed upon its release. Quentin Tarantino, a self-proclaimed Saturday Night Fever fan, found Travolta at his home a discredited actor. The conversation lasted for hours. "He said to me, 'What the hell have you done?' I was hurt, but moved. I thought to myself: damn, I must have been a damn good actor," Travolta recounted in 1995. Pulp Fiction (1994) — Palme d'Or winner, Vincent Vega as a lethargic hitman dancing the twist with Uma Thurman — was a complete resurrection. "For me, as an actor, this role was uncharted territory," he confided during a masterclass reported by France Télévisions.

Battlefield Earth: Personal Dramas and an Unbroken Legend

The successful years that followed—Get Shorty, Broken Arrow, Face/Off—were unfortunately followed by another series of missteps, culminating in Battlefield Earth in 2000, an industrial disaster adapted from a book by Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology, of which Travolta is a high-ranking member. “He believes in it in the truest sense,” explains his biographer Philippe Durant in an interview with France Télévisions. “That’s it, that’s his tribute to Scientology, something even Tom Cruise avoided doing.” Since then, Travolta’s films have only been released on VOD. The 2010s and 2020s were also marked by personal tragedies: in 2009, he lost his 16-year-old son Jett, who had been seriously ill since childhood; in 2020, his wife Kelly Preston died of cancer; two years later, Olivia Newton-John also passed away. “A famous actor, in fact, is defined by two or three landmark films; the others are forgotten,” concludes Philippe Durant. “When John Travolta walks up the steps, the older generation will remember Saturday Night Fever. Others will remember Pulp Fiction. And they’ll applaud him. That’s what makes a star.”