John Travolta has explained his striking new look at the Cannes Film Festival, where he sported an array of colorful berets and round glasses. The 72-year-old actor and director said he was paying homage to classic filmmakers while promoting his directorial debut, Propeller One-Way Night Coach.
Speaking to CNN in an interview shared on Monday, Travolta revealed that his decision to adopt the distinctive style was intentional. "I said, 'I'm a director this time. You're an actor, play the part of a director, look like an old-school director,'" he explained. He researched images from the 1920s through the 1960s, noting that "the old-school directors wore berets, and the glasses. I thought, 'That's what I'm doing. I'm doing an homage to being a director.'"
Travolta wore black, white, navy, and brown berets during the festival, pairing them with round spectacles. This look is reminiscent of iconic filmmakers such as Ingmar Bergman and Francis Ford Coppola. The Grease star also noted that the unique attire would help him remember the event in the future. "I've been around for over 50 years doing movies, but I can't tell, when I look back, the difference between the events," he said. Now, he added, "I'll know — 'Oh, that was Propeller One-Way Night Coach, that was Cannes, that's when I won the Palme d'Or,' and I'll have a vividness of it."
The festival's artistic director, Thierry Frémaux, surprised Travolta with the honorary Palme d'Or ahead of the film's world premiere on Friday. Wearing a white beret, Travolta was visibly moved, clutching his chest and saying, "This is beyond the Oscar. I can't believe this. This is the last thing I expected."
Propeller One-Way Night Coach, which Travolta wrote, directed, and co-produced, is based on his own 1997 children's novel. The story follows a young aspiring pilot named Jeff and his mother on a cross-country journey to Hollywood. Travolta's 26-year-old daughter, Ella Bleu Travolta, plays a flight attendant in the film. The movie will begin streaming globally on Apple TV later this month.
A flying enthusiast who has held a pilot's license since age 22, Travolta flew his own plane to the premiere while wearing a navy beret, as shown in a video he shared on Instagram.
