John Travolta has paid tribute to ‘Pulp Fiction’ for giving him "a second chance at a high-end career" in Hollywood.
The 70-year-old actor starred as gangster Vincent Vega in Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 picture and has thanked the film for being "a next-level, upper echelon opportunity" that revived his career after a lean period following his 1970s success in 'Grease' and 'Saturday Night Fever'.
In a retrospective look back at the flick in celebration of its 30th anniversary, Travolta told Variety: "The last success [I’d had] before ‘Pulp Fiction’ was the ‘Look Who’s Talking’ films, so getting the ‘Pulp’ offer was certainly a next-level, upper echelon opportunity more along the lines of the Oscar nomination-type performance of ‘Saturday Night Fever’ and ‘Blow Out’ integrity.
"I was one of his [Tarantino’s] favorite actors growing up on ‘Welcome Back Kotter’, ‘Saturday Night Fever’, ‘Grease’ and ‘Blow Out’, and he wanted to work with me."
Travolta added that the fact that he was one of movie critic Pauline Kael’s "favourite actors" - someone Tarantino greatly admired - helped land him a role in ‘Pulp Fiction’.
He said: "I think it helped his being a big Pauline Kael fan, and my being one of her favorite actors, so he raised the bar for me and gave me a second chance at a high-end career, one that he always wanted me to have."
The actor emphasised he held ‘Pulp Fiction’ in "one of the most special places" because it reignited his Hollywood career and returned him to his status as a movie icon that he first earned two decades prior.
He said: "[I hold it in] one of the most special places, because it rekindled my career to a level that I always wanted it to be. It also matched an iconic status with ‘Saturday Night Fever’, which was very rare in movie history."
Travolta - who starred opposite Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman, Bruce Willis and Tim Roth - added watching the film for the first time was like seeing "history in the making".
He recalled: "It was at the Cannes Film Festival. It exceeded my expectations because it arrived at a new level of storytelling and filmmaking and you could feel it — it was visceral. It was history in the making."
