John Travolta trivia | 60 facts about the famous actor

John Travolta is a really famous actor, as he has portrayed many popular characters, which are even considered sometimes classic.

But how many things do you know about the famous actor? Well, if not so much, then keep on reading!

1. John Travolta’s full name is John Joseph Travolta.
2. He was born on February 18, 1954, and he is a famous American actor, singer, dancer.
3. Besides all these Travolta is also a… pilot.
4. He actually owns four planes!
5. John Travolta was the youngest of six children^.
6. His father, Salvatore “Sam” Travolta was a semiprofessional American football player turned tire salesman and partner in a tire company, Travolta Tyre Exchange.
7. His mother, Helen Cecilia, 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.
8. He had 5 siblings: Joey, Ellen, Ann, Margaret, and Sam Travolta.
9. All of them were inspired by their mother’s love of theatre and drama and became actors.
10. His father was a second-generation Italian American with roots in Godrano, Sicily, and his mother was Irish American.
11. He was raised Roman Catholic.
12. He converted to Scientology in 1975, and since then he has given many interviews explaining things about Scientology, and why he chose it.
13. Travolta attended Dwight Morrow High School but dropped out as a junior at age 17 in 1971.
14. After dropping out of school, he moved into New York City, to become an actor.
15. His big break came into the age of 18, with the movie Saturday Night Fever, following the huge hit Grease.
16. Travolta rose to fame during the 1970s, appearing on the television series Welcome Back, Kotter (1975–1979), and starring in the box office successes Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Grease (1978).
17. His acting career declined through the 1980s.
18. His career “came back from the dead” in the 1990s with his role in Pulp Fiction (1994).
19. He was nominated for an Oscar.
20. He has since starred in films such as Get Shorty (1995), Broken Arrow (1996), Face/Off (1997), Swordfish (2001), The Punisher (2004), Bolt (2008), and The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009).
21. Travolta was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for performance in Saturday Night Fever.
22. At the time he was only 24 and one of the youngest actors to receive this honor.
23. His mother and sister were also given minor roles in Saturday Night Fever.
24. Another one of his sisters played a waitress in Grease.
25. He won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy for his performance in Get Shorty.
26. He has received a total of six nominations, the most recent being in 2011.
27. In 2010, he received the IIFA Award for Outstanding Achievement in International Cinema.
28. In 2016, Travolta received his first Primetime Emmy Award, as a producer of the first season of the anthology series American Crime Story.
29. He also received an additional Emmy nomination and a Golden Globe nomination for his portrayal of lawyer Robert Shapiro in the series.
30. Travolta had quite a few girlfriends, before ending up with the love of his life.
31. He was in a relationship with actress Diana Hyland, whom he met while filming The Boy in the Plastic Bubble in 1976.
32. They remained together until Hyland’s death from breast cancer on March 27, 1977.
33. Hyland passed away while Travolta was filming Saturday Night Live.
34. Filming stopped at the time to accommodate him while he attended his beloved’s funeral.
35. In 1980, Travolta dated French actress Catherine Deneuve.
36. He also had an on-again/off-again relationship with actress Marilu Henner, which ended permanently in 1985.
37. He married actress Kelly Preston in 1991.
38. Actually, they got married twice, but only because the first marriage with a Scientologist minister was deemed illegal.
39. They bought a house in Islesboro, Maine, where they raised their family.
40. They had three children: Jett, Ella Bleu , and Benjamin .
41. Jett was born in 1992, Ella in 2000 and Benjamin in 2010.
42. They have regularly attended marriage counseling, and Travolta has stated that therapy has helped the marriage.
43. They resided in Ocala, Florida.
44. On July 12, 2020, Kelly Preston died after two years of treatment for breast cancer at the age of 57.
45. John Travolta announced it to the public through a touching Instagram post.
46. His wife’s death came 11 years after their son’s, Jett, death.
47. Jett Travolta died at the age of 16 in the Bahamas on the 2nd of January in 2009.
48. Jett had a history of seizures from the age of two.
49. He had also been hospitalized at 15 months old with Kawasaki disease and was on the autism spectrum.
50. He suffered a seizure after hitting his head on a bathtub, and Jett is said to have been found unconscious by a maid who then raised the alarm.
51. John Travolta was initially suspected of wrongdoing in the treatment of his son.
52. The actor alleged he’d been blackmailed by Tarino Lightbourne, the ambulance driver who was called to attend to his son, and his lawyer Pleasant Bridgewater.
53. In a $25m extortion case, Lightbourne and Tarino were accused of demanding money from Travolta and threatening to release evidence to the media of Travolta’s supposed wrongdoing.
54. John Travolta and Kelly Preston founded the Jett Travolta Foundation, after their son’s death to honor him.
55. It is a non-for-profit set out to help children with special needs and has assisted other famous organizations in their pursuits, like the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy.
56. Travolta has also released many of his own songs.
57. His song “Let Her In.” was good enough at his musical pursuits that this song made it to the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1976.
58. Travolta landed the title role of John Gotti in his film Gotti because the family requested him themselves.
59. Then, Pitbull was so thrilled by Travolta’s transformation into the crime boss that he offered to help with the film’s musical score.
60. Except for the leading roles he became famous for, John Travolta also played a cartoon dog in the animated Disney picture Bolt. Travolta played the part of the lead dog in the movie, which was nominated for multiple awards.