Their intervention comes after the actor was seen embracing his unnamed male friend as he prepared to board his own Boeing 707 jet in Canada, where he is filming his role as middle-aged mother Edna Turnblad in Hairspray.Įven accounting for the kissy-kissy world of showbusiness, the picture is astonishing. Hardly surprising, then, that Travolta’s PR team at the influential William Morris Agency in Beverly Hills has been holding crisis meetings in an attempt to limit the fall-out. Suffice to say this is not the most opportune time for the 52-year-old Travolta to be filming his latest role - in which he dresses in drag to play a woman in the oh-so-camp musical Hairspray.Įqually ill-timed for him were reports this week that Jennifer Lopez - his would-be leading lady in the upcoming big-screen version of Dallas - turned down the role of his wife Sue Ellen because she decided Travolta is not 'macho' enough to be the double-dealing JR Ewing.Īnd if that were not enough to darken his mood, there continue to be wild and fanciful claims that his marriage to actress Kelly Preston was arranged by the shadowy cult-like religion of Scientology, of which he is a leading disciple.
No wonder the Pulp Fiction and Grease star is said to be seething - not least because the rumours are threatening his position as one of Hollywood’s leading men.Ĭould the pictures really be proof that one of the movie world’s biggest heart-throbs of the past 30 years has been living a double life strikingly at odds with his family man image? Indeed, one Los Angeles casting director described the photograph as 'an absolute disaster' for the actor. The whispers about Travolta’s sexuality which have plagued his movie career almost from the outset are now reaching a crescendo. How ironic, then, that this week the plat du jour at the gossip-hungry tables of the trendy eaterie is Travolta himself - or rather the snatched picture of the somewhat rotund actor tenderly kissing a man on the lips on the steps of his private plane.
Holding court in Hollywood’s fashionable Orso restaurant last month, John Travolta was indulging himself with two of his favourite subjects - his love of food and his loathing of Tinseltown’s paparazzi.īetween mouthfuls of pasta, he treated his companions, who included actors Tom Hanks and Sally Field, to a lengthy and expletive-laden diatribe about the vast sums photographers can earn from sneak pictures of celebrities.Īs a result, he proudly told his famous friends, he has instinctively trained his senses to know when their prying lenses are being trained on him.