Travolta chosen for ‘Most Popular All-Time International Star in India’ award.
By The American Bazaar Staff
MUMBAI: The upcoming Indian International Film Academy (IIFA) Awards, which is already set to be a star-studded extravaganza the likes of which has never been seen before in the US, has just added another luminary to its glowing list of guests: Hollywood actor John Travolta.
The actor will be accepting the “Most Popular All-Time International Star in India,” award, according to a press release issued by the IIFA Award organizers.
Travolta is the latest in a line-up of celebrities that includes Deepika Padukone, Farhan Akhtar and Kevin Spacey who will grace the Raymond James Stadium in Tampa Bay, Florida this week, from April 23-26.
Travolta has had a long and storied career in Hollywood, becoming a heartthrob in both the US and India. He first burst on the scene with a career-making performance in Saturday Night Fever, the 1977 film that defined the disco generation, and which earned him his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.
The following year, he appeared in the musical Grease, which became another cultural staple and is widely considered one of his best films. Travolta made appearances in several hit films afterwards, including Brian de Palma’s Blow Out in the early 1980s, but his career suffered a setback that seemed insurmountable for most of that decade.
In 1994, however, Quentin Tarantino cast him as hitman Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction. The film went on to win the Cannes Film Festival, and garnered Travolta another Academy Award nomination for Best Lead Actor. His career picked up considerably after that, with performances in Get Shorty (which won him a Golden Globe in 1996), Face/Off,Hairspray, and Savages.
Next year, he is set to star in Gotti: In the Shadow of my Father, in which he’ll play the famed US crime figure John Gotti. The film has been tipped as a heavy Oscar front-runner in next year’s race, and will feature Travolta alongside his wife, actress Kelly Preston.
Some 30,000 people are expected to attend this year’s IIFA Awards, and witness Travolta’s acceptance of the award. The honor is especially significant because this is the first year the IIFA Awards will take place in the US, making Travolta the first US celebrity to be honored by the organization on US soil.