Travolta's tears for Ground Zero

When Tonight Show host Jay Leno asked John Travolta to appear as a guest to discuss Ground Zero, he felt the request merited a trip to view the devastation and rescue effort for himself.

"I had to know what I'd be talking about," said Travolta. "I hadn't been to Ground Zero. And when I got there, the reality really hit me, especially the fact that those firemen and rescue workers were prepared to give their lives for those of complete strangers. I know I'd do that for my children, but could you for a stranger?" Famously, Travolta flies planes himself. "As the captain of a plane, if an incident happened, theoretically, I'm meant to get all my passengers out before I save myself," he added.

As owner and pilot of several aircraft (including a Boeing 707), he flies about 200 hours a year. "Maybe another 100 as a passenger. I don't always fly myself if I'm working, sometimes I'll take a snooze in the back. But I'm very cut and dried about security. Pilots should certainly carry guns. There should be guns in the cockpit, which should be sealed, and there should be a marshal on every flight. I do it. I'm not armed, but the plane is armed. And I have an armed security guard, plus a dog inspects the plane before anyone gets on." Was he always so cautious? "Oh no, this is all since 11 September."

Travolta, who turns 48 next month, is on a comparatively safe career plane these days. His new film, Domestic Disturbance, racked up a reasonable $44 million in the US last year, while Swordfish, which he terms now "an anti-terrorism movie", fared even better with a whisker under $70 million. That film also saw the famously food-loving Travolta (he employs his own chef) slim down substantially. Today in Los Angeles, he looks as if he is sticking to his culinary guns.

His salaries, too, remain consistent, around the $20 million mark, though he dropped his fee to $10 million for the roundly panned Battlefield Earth, adapted from a novel by L Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology. Ask him if there's a film he regrets making and one might hope he'd cite the latter. But not a bit of it. The endlessly upbeat Travolta says he "loved it". He claims the film "made 100 million bucks" , though its US run made only $21.5 million. "And it was the first Hubbard film to make it to the screen. He's a great sciencefiction writer. There's still the second part of the same book we might do."

Travolta insists he is highly discerning in his choices: "I could name a bunch of big successes I said no to. But I could also name a bunch of big successes I said yes too." His consistently successful films of late have been in the thriller/ action genre, and he seems in no hurry to reignite his musical career. He recently turned down a role in Chicago, for example, a film many of Holly-wood's elite are clamouring to star in. Anything he regrets turning down? "The Green Mile. I was offered that and should have done it. But I wouldn't trade my career for anyone else's. The only career I like outside of mine is Tom Hanks's, but I wouldn't trade any of my films for his, except perhaps Forrest Gump and The Green Mile.

"I still like my career better because of what I contribute specifically to it. I love the drama of it. I love the spectacular acceptance and rejection. At the end of the day, that's a much more exciting career to me than one which just goes moseying along."

He signed on for Domestic Disturbance, a solid if predictable thriller, about his character's wife remarrying and his suspicions that her second husband is putting both her and his son at risk. He insists: "That film really gave me something to do. My character was complex; a drinker and failing in his business. I loved the adversity he had to go through; having the certainty that something was wrong and the courage to do something about it. Ultimately, he handles the situation in a heroic kind of way."

Travolta can also identify with his Domestic Disturbance character's failing in his career; though, being a positive-thinking Scientologist, he would never employ such a consciously negative term. Even when his career was in the doldrums-he maintains "I've always seen the glass half-full. By nature I'm positive anyway but my studies in Scientology make me even more positive. I'm very resilient. I can look at things negatively for a while but I get tired of that, and want to spring back to being positive. You can get addicted to suffering. Some people actually like the fear and beautiful sadness of it all. I don't mind living moments of that, crying at a good film or getting scared. But I don't want to live there all the time."

Does he cry often at films? "Oh yeah. I just did this thing for the New York Times. They do exposes on actors' favourite movies. Mine is Yankee Doodle Dandy, so I sat and watched it with this journalist and cried."