Hollywood star John Travolta was given a shock lifetime achievement award on the Cannes Film Festival Friday as he premiered the primary film he has ever directed.
The man who turned an icon in a single day with “Saturday Night Fever” was visibly moved as he accepted the honorary Palme d’Or earlier than the screening of “Propeller One-Way Night Coach”, which is predicated on a e book about his first expertise in an airliner.
“I just can’t believe it. This is beyond the Oscar, really,” he stated as he accepted the tribute.
The pageant has been laying on the love for Hollywood legends this yr regardless of the large studios staying away, with honorary Palmes for Barbra Streisand and Peter Jackson in addition to a gala screening for Vin Diesel and the celebrities of “The Fast and the Furious” franchise to mark its twenty fifth anniversary.
Travolta — who has by no means received an Oscar — revived his flagging profession along with his iconic flip as hitman Vincent Vega in Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction”, which received the pageant’s Palme d’Or prime prize in 1994.
Many critics hailed it as his best efficiency, one which has since gone down in cinema historical past.
“My favorite movies in the history of my life have always been the winners of the Palme d’Or,” Travolta stated.
Cannes had saved the award below wraps till the actor walked on stage for the premiere sporting a black swimsuit and a white beret.
The 72-year-old stated he had been vastly stunned to have his directorial debut, which stars his daughter Ella Bleu as an air hostess, accepted on the world’s most prestigious movie pageant.
When Cannes director Thierry Fremaux instructed him in November that “it would be the first film ever accepted that early I cried like a baby,” he stated.
“I had no expectation my film would be accepted,” he added.
“Propeller One-Way Night Coach” is a one-hour self-financed autobiographical story about Travolta’s flight as an eight-year-old along with his actress mom from New York to Los Angeles in 1962.
“This is the blueprint of my life,” stated the actor, a lifelong aeroplane nut, who narrates the story. What you may see within the film is totally my perspective on what I witnessed folks undergo.
“Everyone that was in the movie is sitting in the audience right there, my family,” he added.
Travolta was bitten by the appearing bug early.
Born in New Jersey to the an Irish mom and an Italian-American father who ran a tyre retailer, he left faculty at 16 to strive his hand at appearing and dancing.
Two years later he landed his first massive stage function within the Broadway musical “Grease”.
He was nominated for an Oscar in 1978 for taking part in disco-dancing champion Tony Manero within the low-budget “Saturday Night Fever” and was launched into the Hollywood stratosphere by his function within the film model of “Grease” the identical yr.
The rights to “Propeller One-Way Night Coach” have been purchased by Apple, Travolta stated.
Asked if he would direct once more, he stated he had watched all kinds of administrators as an actor.
“I really believe that I can navigate around all of that, and anything I would choose to do, but I really feel I have to have passion about the material to do again what I’ve done here,” he stated.
© 2026 AFP