![\"John](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/John-Travolta-Actor-2024-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still)<\/p>\n
Sat 16 August 2025 22:45, UK <\/p>\n
If you\u2019ve never heard of the 1985 movie Perfect starring John Travolta<\/a> and Jamie-Lee Curtis, then don\u2019t worry, you are not alone. <\/p>\n But if we say \u201cyou know that film that Travolta and Lee Curtis are dancing in a workout studio looking all sweaty and thrusting their groins back and forth\u201d you may realise what we\u2019re talking about.<\/p>\n Perfect is also the film that essentially killed, for a time, the career of Travolta, who in the late 1970s was probably the most famous male film star in the world. That\u2019s how bad it was. <\/p>\n Perhaps the people involved in making the film might have had an inkling as to its fate when they looked at the general premise, which was essentially, \u201cTravolta is a Rolling Stone reporter determined to prove that health and fitness centres are the new best places to meet single people.\u201d<\/p>\n Both the lead actors were enjoying enormous fame at the time, Lee Curtis having steamed up the screen in the hit Eddie Murphy comedy Trading Places and Travolta still riding the wave of not just commercial success with Saturday Night Fever and Grease, but critical acclaim with his starring role in Brian De Palma\u2019s 1981 thriller Blow Out<\/a>.<\/p>\n So uniting the pair would presumably have been seen as something of a fait accompli in terms of box office success. Not so sadly. It lost tens of millions of dollars on its release and attracted reviews from critics along the lines of \u201ca trashy movie about women jumping up and down in leotards\u201d, before picking up three Golden Raspberry awards and \u2018Worst Picture\u2019 at that year\u2019s Stinkers Bad Movie Awards.<\/p>\n Perfect did so badly that it even made Travolta consider packing in acting altogether and focusing on his secondary love of aviation. As a qualified commercial pilot, Travolta could have been whisking people off on holiday on a regular basis. Instead he spent time travelling by himself, and when asked back then if he thought his career was over he said: \u201cNo, but I thought that I might not want my career to happen anymore.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t know if I could take the whole package. Was it worth the pleasure of making a movie\u2013which is always a pleasure\u2013and the pain of releasing it? I\u2019m talking about all the stuff that goes into getting a movie out. I remember saying to someone at the time, \u2018I don\u2019t know if I can continue doing this.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n Quentin Tarantino has called Perfect \u201cwoefully underappreciated\u201d however so there is that. The film certainly marked a spectacular fall from grace for Travolta, who wouldn\u2019t recover until the 1989 baby voice comedy Look Who\u2019s Talking, and wouldn\u2019t truly recover until his phoenix from the flames trick in Tarantino\u2019s 1994 classic Pulp Fiction<\/a>, which turned him from long-forgotten former Hollywood heartthrob to one of the coolest men on the planet.<\/p>\n