The power list: The 100 most powerful people in Hollywood
Premiere, June 1999

24 JOHN TRAVOLTA
RANK LAST YEAR: 20

JOB TITLE: High-Flying Star. STATUS REPORT: Neither Primary Colors nor A Civil Action found its audience. Paramount balked at hiring wife Kelly Preston as costar for The General's Daughter, but Columbia gave in for now-postponed The Shipping News. Gearing up to play a tenfoot-tall alien in independently financed, $80 million version of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard's Battlefield Earth, a potential career crippler. STRENGTH: Able to combine charm and menace like no one else. WEAKNESSES: Prima donna demands beginning to seem unprofessional. Now works almost exclusively off TelePrompTer. YES, IT'S TRUE: When Elmore Leonard called about the sequel to Get Shorty, informed the celebrated author that he wasn't reading, and began discussing newly purchased Boeing 707.