NEW YORK — What America needs is a movie star who acts like a star, and not some guy down the block. John Travolta, with a dimple as deep as the Marianas Trench, will oblige. He doesn't hide behind the baseball cap, bad sweater and aw-shucks act of pretending that, while paid $20 million a picture, he's just like us.
He isn't.
He's Frank Sinatra. He's Gloria Swanson. He's rarely at the mercy of other people's problems. He appears to deny himself nothing. He lives like a shah.
Travolta owns a Boeing 707. It can accommodate 130 passengers. He has three other planes; his son, 6, is named Jett. He owns four houses. The one in Maine, the old Drexel place in Penobscot Bay, sleeps 50.
He has a chef. On movie sets, everyone else eats cold cuts. Travolta has lobster. Colleagues frequently remark about Travolta's eating - the amount, the quality. Sitting in a posh hotel suite to promote A Civil Action - his second performance in 10 months to generate talk of an Oscar nomination (he's up for a Golden Globe this month for his uncanny Clinton turn in Primary Colors) - he displays a Kirk Douglas dimple, a killer smile, those intense blues and an ample stomach. He has a real man's gut and a raja's palate.
``I don't know if I go into an `I deserve it' factor. I just know that life is an art form, and you can be just as good at how you live, as creative with the way you live, as how you act. Artists forget that life is art, too,'' he says, dressed in a spruce-green suit and celadon knit shirt, happily slumped on a sofa.
``It's a fine line because you don't want to deny the pleasure of something you've achieved, yet you don't want to be bogged down in your pleasure. But it's equally pretentious not to enjoy it.''
Even to people who live well, Travolta lives better. Mike Nichols, his Primary Colors director, has said that sitting down with the 44-year-old star is ``not unlike taking a meeting with Henry VIII.'' Director Jon Turteltaub recalled negotiating changes to Phenomenon: ``There were 13 people at this meeting, all to talk about John's feelings about the script. It was like setting up the Treaty of Versailles.''
For all the trappings, Travolta is still an actor. He continues to take risks that most stars shun. He'll play the heavy, literally and figuratively.
He looked dreadful in Michael, with greasy, unkempt hair. He was overweight in Primary Colors. He's dislikable in A Civil Action. The audience roots for the legal case, which has merit, not the character, who may not.
