The friendship between John Travolta and James Gandolfini

Travolta came from a large, working-class New Jersey family in which he said acting didn’t seem like a realistic career path. However, Travolta was heavily inspired by Gandolfini and also by his mother, who had been an actress and singer, later becoming a high school drama and English teacher, nurturing Travolta’s love of film.

After dropping out of school, Travolta moved to New York, where he began playing small roles in musicals and off-broadway plays before moving to Los Angeles, where he found his first major film role, in Brian De Palma’s film . Carriesomeone with whom he developed a lasting working relationship, later starring Explode.

His first project with Gandolfini was Be short in 1995, in which Travolta plays Chilli Palmer, a Miami mobster who finds himself involved in a Hollywood film production. At the same time, Gandolfini worked on projects such as Crimson Tide and The juror, before later finding international success with one of the most famous television shows of all time, The Sopranos.

Travolta achieved commercial success in Saturday Night Fever and Grease, which catapulted him to stardom and earned him an Oscar for Best Actor. However, in the following years, Travolta struggled to find his next success, turning down roles in American Gigolo and An officer and a gentleman. However, it was this dry spell that led to perhaps his most iconic performance as Vincent Vega in Quentin Tarantino’s film. Pulp Fiction, completely changing the landscape of independent cinema and revitalizing his career by doing something unexpected.

But throughout Travolta’s career, his friendship with Gandolfini remained constant, and when asked about his friendship with Gandolfini, Travolta said “I’m going to tell you two little stories that will explain how I feel about him. The background is that my father sold automobile tires for his father in New York, and he saw my picture in the store window, and that inspired him to be an actor. Later, we ended up making five films together. When my son passed away, he didn’t leave town until I was well, he was worried about me, and I felt it was so human and so unusual for an actor to have such deep feelings for someone. Before that, we were shooting a small film with Salma Hayek (Lonely Hearts). He was getting divorced and was very sad. I saw him backstage and said, ‘Jim, have I told you something?’ He said, ‘What?’ and I said, ‘I loved you the moment I met you.’ He started to cry, because he needed to cry. That was a true connection, and I hope these two stories explain it a little.”