Movies

John Travolta’s Financial Advice Helped Him Land His Most Iconic Role

John Travolta’s Financial Advice Helped Him Land His Most Iconic Role
Image credit: Legion-Media

The actor got his career back thanks to board games.

Summary:

  • Despite having a reputation of one of the best actors in Hollywood now, John Travolta couldn’t boast of the same success back in the 1990s — but his observation made for a famous director actually saved his career.
  • Travolta recently revealed that he had got his iconic role after playing board games with the movie’s director and giving him some significant financial advice.
  • Travolta’s acting path was eventually restored after several critical flops in a row.

After several decades of long-standing and astonishingly successful career, John Travolta may be one of the most renowned actors in modern Hollywood, but back in the 1990s he could’ve lost it all after a bunch of significant box office flops.

Travolta’s reputation was quickly restored after he made an appearance in a cult movie of that decade — and he owes this incredible stroke of luck to his knowledge about finance management.

Travolta recently attended the TCM Classic Film Festival that also happened to be a celebration of the 30th anniversary of Tarantino’s iconic crime film Pulp Fiction. Being reunited with many of his Pulp Fiction colleagues like Uma Thurman, Samuel L. Jackson and Harvey Keitel, Travolta got yet another chance to reminisce about the movie and how he made his way to it.

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As the actor recalled, he first met Quentin Tarantino in the latter’s apartment and they eventually ended up playing board games that were inspired by Travolta’s most iconic roles back in the day.

As Tarantino was relatively young and fresh in the industry back then (before Pulp Fiction he had only directed Reservoir Dogs), Travolta wanted to make sure that the director would be able to cope with his future film’s expenses. The actor then meticulously ran through Tarantino’s budget and, according to him, “felt a little better after that”.

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Travolta’s boldness eventually worked out pretty well for him — Tarantino was so impressed with the actor’s consultation that later on offered him to portray Vincent Vega, one of the leading roles, in the director’s upcoming movie.

Bewildered by such an unexpected turn of events, Travolta asked why Tarantino had made such a choice, and the latter’s response was quite simple — “You had this philosophical viewpoint. I want him to be thoughtful about whatever he's gone through”.

As it turns out, it was Travolta’s knowledge of financial competence that eventually saved his career.

After Pulp Fiction hit the cinemas in 1993, the actor’s career skyrocketed again — with Travolta’s name becoming some kind of synonym to Tarantino’s Oscar-winning masterpiece of independent cinema.

Source: CBR