John Travolta
Birth Name: John Joseph Travolta
American actor, dancer and singer

Born:  February 18, 1954 (age 61), Englewood, New Jersey, United States 

He dropped out of drama school by age 16 in New York,  where he studied voice, dancing and acting. He decided to combine all three of these skills and become a musical comedy performer. At 16 he landed his first professional job in a summer stock production of the musical and later worked on Broadway. He became a star as Vinnie Barbarino in the TV series Welcome Back Kotter, followed by the highly successful films Saturday Night Fever and Grease. After a significant lull, Travolta made a career comeback in 1994 with Pulp Fiction, earning his second acting Oscar nomination and going on to star in an array of projects that include Get Shorty, Primary Colors, Battlefield Earth, Wild Dogs and American Crime Story. 

Background and Early Career:

 He made his debut in an off-Broadway production of Rain (1972) and then joined the Broadway cast of Grease as a replacement cast member in the role of Doody. He was later part of the original cast for the hit 1974 musical Over Here!, starring Patty and Maxine Andrews along with Marilu Henner.

In 1975, Travolta shot to stardom with his role as Vinnie Barbarino in the hit TV series Welcome Back, Kotter, becoming a popular teen heartthrob. The next year he played the lead in the critically acclaimed TV movie The Boy in the Plastic Bubble.

Massive Hits : Saturday Night Fever and Grease

Having made his big-screen debut in two horror flicks—The Devil’s Rain (1975) and Carrie (1976)—international fame soon came for the young actor with two successive box-office smashes, the first being Saturday Night Fever (1977). Portraying the white suit-clad Tony Manero, Travolta earned an Oscar nod for his boogeying, hip swiveling role, becoming an enduring icon for disco nightlife and '70s culture.

 the next year in the form of Grease. For his reunion with the musical, Travolta took on the lead role of cool guy Danny opposite suffering love interest Sandy, as played by Olivia Newton-John.

Big Comeback: Pulp Fiction :

. After co-starring with Lily Tomlin in the 1978 romantic drama Moment by Moment, he did have another hit with the 1980 romantic drama Urban Cowboy. the Saturday Night Fever sequel Staying Alive (1983), directed by Sylvester Stallone and then Other modest film outings included Two of a Kind (1983), in which he reunited with Newton-John, and Perfect (1985), co-starring Jamie Lee Curtis. By the end of the 1980s. Then, in 1994, Travolta made a monumental career comeback when he starred in Quentin Tarantino's classic work Pulp Fiction. Travolta earned his second Academy Award nomination for his role as hitman Vincent Vega. Travolta went on to win a Golden Globe for his performance in the 1995 comedy Get Shorty.

Other notable films from the '90s included Broken Arrow (1996), Phenomenon (1996) and Mike Nichols’s Primary Colors (1998), in which Travolta played a politician based on President Bill Clinton. Travolta ended the decade with The General's Daughter (1999).

Albums of John Travolta:

• John Travolta 1976
• Can't let you go 1977
• The Best of John Travolta 1978
• Whenever i'am away from you 1978
• John Travolta & Olivia Newton 2012 

Personal Life:

Travolta married actress Kelly Preston in 1991. The couple had two children: son Jett, born on April 13, 1992, and daughter Ella Bleu, born in 2000. Of fatherhood. Tragedy struck the Travolta family when their son, Jett, died on January 2, 2009, during a family vacation in the Bahamas. A coroner's report determined the cause of death to be a seizure. In May 2010, nearly 16 months after their son's death, the couple announced that they were expecting another child. Son Benjamin was born in November of that year.