THE BEGINNING
He wanted to be an actor. He said "I wanted to be a child professional actor. At five or six, I wanted to be in in the national company of Gyspy, but my sister and my mother wouldn't let me even go up for that kind of things. I went up for the 'Garry Moore Show' when I was a kid, with the hope and the desire to be a part of this as a child. Then when I was 12, I finally got in my first play, Who'll Save the Plowghboy?. That was exciting; it was an Actor's Studio group in town. And then I started to do summer theater, and it built and built"
School, was deadly dull; by the age of 16, Travolta wanted out. "I was making a living in acting. And I went to my dad an said'Look, this is what I want to do. And I'm certainly not going to get the kind of grades to purse a professional life any sort outside acting. So this is my opportunity. I have an agent and, really, this is the time to let me go.' My mother was all for it. My father said 'Look, I'll give you a year. But if you don't pull this off, you're going back to school.' I said 'OK, give me a year. And I just made dad sure I got my Actor's Equity card that year. I got my SAG ( Screen Actors Guild) card, I was in four commercials. I starred in summer stock and I got leads. I had a little part in a soap opera. I just made sure that that year chock-full and that I made a good salary"
Then, he moved to Manhattan where he first bunked in the apartment of a sister and lander move into a coldwater flat. He soon had picked up a pair of agents. In March of that year, when he had just celebrated his eighteenh birthday, he was cast in an Off-Broadway revival Rain playing role of Private Griggs. But Travolta's career was beginning to roll. Between 1972 and 1974, he appeared an guest roles on television series Owen Marshall, Counsellor at Law (airing December 14, 1972), The Rookies (October 1, 1973) and Medical Center (December 16, 1974), and for nine months, he played the role of Doody in Grease. In 1974, he won a supporting role in Over Here!, a Broodway musical (his part was small: his character was named Misfit, and he was one of a group of singing and dancing soldiers heading off to battle). Then, in the summer of 1976, after he had become a teen fave o Welcome Back, Kotter, he starred Bus Stop.