10 Dying Acting Careers Saved By One Amazing Movie

5. John Travolta - Pulp Fiction

When you see a title about movies that saved actors’ careers, you know John Travolta and Pulp Fiction have to be featured somewhere.

Rocketing to stardom in the late '70s with the double whammy of Saturday Night Fever and Grease, Travolta became a household name. He was the all-singing, all-dancing movie star, but he was also unafraid to take challenging roles, excelling in genre flicks like Brian De Palma’s Blow Out.

However his rise to the top of Hollywood was surprisingly short lived. Most of the '80s saw Travolta experience an extreme comedown, starring in guff nobody remembers now like the “comedy” The Experts and “romance movie” Perfect.

By the time the '90s hit, family friendly duds like Look Who’s Talking pretty much signalled that Travolta’s glory days were over.

And then Quentin Tarantino came along.

Hot off the success of Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino had an idea to revitalise Travolta’s career and give his own movie the performance it needed to succeed: cast the actor against type as the scraggly, greasy, drugged up hitman Vincent Vega.

Travolta seized the role, and when Pulp Fiction became one of the most influential movies of the '90s, it saw him back on top as a bankable leading man.