John Travolta’s New Look at Cannes Has the Internet Losing It

John Travolta walked the Cannes red carpet on Friday night and the internet has not recovered. The 72-year-old star showed up to the premiere of his directorial debut, Propeller One-Way Night Coach, wearing a cream-colored wool beret, circular wire-rimmed glasses, a sharply groomed beard, and a three-piece black suit layered over a knit vest — finished with a white shirt, white tie, a pocket square, and black patent-leather loafers. It was, to put it mildly, a look.

Fans who have followed Travolta for decades did an immediate double take. “WHO is that and what have they done with John Travolta?!” one person wrote online. Another admitted, “I had to zoom in to verify it is indeed him.”

The reactions came fast and they came funny. “Not the LL Cool J, unc,” one Threads user wrote. “What do they mean ‘unrecognizable’ — John Travolta has paid a lot of money to look like Jack Harlow,” said another. Someone on X asked, “When did John Travolta become Samuel L. Jackson?” while another commenter went full cinephile: “Looks like he woke up from a coma thinking he was the other star from Pulp Fiction.” The beard in particular divided people — “That chinstrap is killing my eyes, absolutely hideous,” one fan wrote, while another went poetic: “It must be so nice to have so much money you can dress like a surrealist painter on the Left Bank of Paris in the 1930s.”

And then there was this, perhaps the most succinct take of the evening: “Either that white ain’t cracking or bro a vampire.”

The beret, it turns out, isn’t just a one-night thing. In a behind-the-scenes Instagram video, Travolta can be seen piloting his own plane to Cannes — because of course he did, the man is a licensed pilot — wearing an askew navy beret with a matching suede jacket set as he sits in the cockpit alongside Ella. On Saturday, he was spotted again in an all-black ensemble with a matching chapeau. The beret may be his new signature, and honestly, Cannes is the right place to commit to that particular bit.

A Surprise That Stopped the Room

Whatever the internet thought of the look, what happened inside the Debussy Theater before the screening was genuinely moving. Festival artistic director Thierry Frémaux brought out an honorary Palme d’Or — completely unannounced — and presented it to Travolta onstage. Frémaux called him “one of the greatest actors” and, by another account, “one of the greatest artists of the 20th and 21st centuries.”

Travolta clutched his chest. He looked stunned.

“I can’t believe this. This is the last thing I expected,” he told the crowd. “You said this would be a special night, but I didn’t think you meant this.” Then he looked out at the room and said what everyone in Hollywood has quietly thought for years: “This is beyond the Oscar.”

It’s an honor that puts him in serious company. Tom Cruise received an honorary Palme d’Or in 2022. Peter Jackson was honored at this year’s opening ceremony. Barbra Streisand is set to receive hers later in the festival. For Travolta — whose career has included Saturday Night Fever, Grease, and Pulp Fiction, along with one of Hollywood’s most remarkable comeback arcs — the recognition landed.

The Film Itself Is a Different Story

Propeller One-Way Night Coach — its full French title is Vol de Nuit pour Los Angeles — is based on a children’s book Travolta wrote in 1997. He wrote, directed, and co-produced the film, which centers on a young airplane enthusiast traveling to Hollywood with his mother. Ella Bleu Travolta co-stars alongside her father, making it very much a family affair. Travolta described the story as deeply personal: “It’s really a mixture of my sister and my mother because they both influenced me so deeply, and they were responsible for all my hopes and dreams, and they watched me make them come true.”

The film runs just under an hour and is heading to Apple TV+ later this month — which made its Cannes slot unusual, given the festival’s traditional resistance to streaming titles. The reviews have been, to be generous, complicated.

The Wrap said it “feels like it may have actually been directed by an alien discovering human interaction for the first time.” RogerEbert.com was kinder in spirit if not in verdict: “It’s a gift that Travolta made for himself and family, something he likely wanted to leave as a part of his legacy. That doesn’t make it a good movie.” The BBC called it “a dud” and used it as a case study in why great actors can be bad directors. The Guardian landed somewhere in the middle — “a sweet, odd diversion — more eccentric, maybe, than Travolta intended” — and Screen Daily settled on “an authentic and genuine oddity of a project.”

None of that seemed to dampen the night for Travolta, who has been relatively private since losing his son Jett in 2009 and his wife, actress Kelly Preston, to cancer in 2020. His public appearances have been fewer and more deliberate. This one — his first time at Cannes since 2018 — was clearly planned to mean something.

And whatever the critics make of the film, the man showed up, wore the hat, took the award, and said what he felt. That’s pretty much always been the John Travolta move.