Finding success in TV and film during the 1970s, back when he was still in his early 20s, John Travolta is one of those actors who feels like he’s been around – and in films both good and bad – forever. It’s a career that’s seen its share of ups and downs, as well as comebacks and misfires across the board. Films like Gotti, Battlefield Earth, and The Fanatic are notoriously bad, sure, but Travolta’s also been front and center of some classics in his time.

The following movies represent the best of the best, and are intended to focus on the brighter areas of Travolta’s body of work. These films are varied and, for the most part, hold up well, and are ranked below, starting with the fairly good and ending with the stone-cold classics John Travolta played a part in bringing to fruition.

10 'Primary Colors' (1998)

Director: Mike Nichols

Directed by Mike Nichols, Primary Colors is a political dramedy that’s not explicitly about real-world people, though it undoubtedly took influence from the real-life of Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. Similarly, John Travolta plays a character who was influenced by then-President Clinton, playing a governor named Jack Stanton as he takes a shot at running for the White House.

It probably felt a bit more vital at the time of release (though it didn’t exactly thrive at the box office), but Primary Colors does still have its charms as a film, even if the world of politics it depicts feels like a distant past at this stage, and in this climate. Travolta’s supported by a strong supporting cast here, too, with Emma Thompson playing Burton’s wife, as well as turns from Billy Bob Thornton and an Oscar-nominated Kathy Bates.

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9 'Hairspray' (2007)

Director: Adam Shankman

Hairspray isn’t the most well-known musical John Travolta’s starred in, but would quite comfortably earn the runner-up spot (more on the “winner” in a bit). It’s based on a Broadway musical that was itself based on the 1988 movie of the same name, directed by John Waters, which was a teen comedy about an outcast teenage girl becoming a star in the early 1960s, after landing a spot on a TV dance show.

The 1988 film represents Waters at his most approachable, and 2007’s Hairspray pushes things a little further still into mass-appeal territory, not to mention making it a musical, of course. John Travolta takes on the role that Divine played in the first movie, disappearing surprisingly well into the role of Edna Turnblad, the mother of the film’s heroine.

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8 'Grease' (1978)

Director: Randal Kleiser

Almost 30 years before Hairspray, Grease was released, and it’s the film that ultimately stands as the most iconic musical John Travolta starred in, for better or worse. Sure, it doesn’t hold up in many ways, but the kitsch has always been strong with Grease, which was always a tongue-in-cheek look at the 1950s, which was nostalgic by the 1970s… and now, the sensibilities of the movie, given it was made, you know, in the 1970s makes it feel old-fashioned on two fronts.

Ignore the terrible message at the film’s end, though, and Grease has a lot that’s hard to resist, even if you might want to. The music’s catchy, Travolta, Olivia Newton-John, Stockard Channing, and others all make an impression, and it’s just a fun/silly musical, sure to be entertaining for anyone who’s able – or willing – to get on its level.

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7 'Saturday Night Fever' (1977)

Director: John Badham

John Travolta’s been nominated for two Academy Awards during his time as an actor, with Saturday Night Fever marking the first. It wasn’t the first noteworthy movie Travolta appeared in, but it was his first big starring role, and can be seen as his breakout movie, as a result. It’s about as aggressively 1970s as a film can get, too, having a level of grittiness to the filmmaking/story and, all the while, revolving around disco.

The narrative is relatively limited, with Travolta’s character, Tony Manero, using the dance floor as a place to escape the tedium and stresses of the other areas of his life. Like with Grease, some may find the dated aspects of Saturday Night Fever off-putting, but it’s well-made when viewed as a product of its time, and the explosive visuals paired with an iconic soundtrack do help things immensely.

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6 'Get Shorty' (1995)

Director: Barry Sonnenfeld

Get Shorty has a pretty phenomenal cast, with John Travolta being joined by the likes of Gene Hackman, Rene Russo, Danny DeVito, Delroy Lindo, and James Gandolfini. It mines comedy out of combining gangsters with Hollywood, and aiming to show that the two “businesses” aren’t so different, in some ways, with Travolta playing a mobster and Hackman playing a horror movie producer.

There’s not much more to it than that, and you could criticize Get Shorty as being a bit of a one-joke movie. Thankfully, that joke’s a funny one, especially for anyone who has something of a fondness for movies about movies. Also, it has to be said that there is always something novel about seeing a movie take shots at Hollywood while also featuring some of the best-known actors in the industry.

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5 'Carrie' (1976)

Director: Brian De Palma

So, Carrie is a classic, and feels pretty hard to fault as far as 1970s horror movies go. However, it loses some points when assessing John Travolta movies specifically, given the fact he’s not really in it much. It’s not really a John Travolta movie, instead belonging to Sissy Spacek, who plays the titular role, with Piper Laurie, as her terrifyingly overbearing mother, also making an impression.

It’s a dark kind of coming-of-age movie, focusing on a girl who eventually lashes out after continual abuse at home, and constant bullying at school. Things turn towards horror, though, on account of her having telekinetic powers, which makes the final act particularly chaotic. Carrie is simple, but it also does exactly what it needs to, and there’s fun to be had in seeing a young – and pre-fame – Travolta make an appearance.

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4 'Blow Out' (1981)

Director: Brian De Palma

Five years on from Carrie, Brian De Palma reunited with John Travolta, giving him the lead role in the gripping and somewhat under-rated thriller that is Blow Out. The story is a slow-burn yet engrossing one, following a sound recordist who tends to work on horror movies, and how he one day finds his life upended after he becomes obsessed with sounds he recorded that might be of an assassination.

Paranoia, conspiracies, and tension ensue, with Blow Out being a pure thriller that sees De Palma playing to his strengths, with Travolta also shining surprisingly well in the lead role. It’s in De Palma’s wheelhouse, but something of an unusual role for John Travolta, with Blow Out suggesting he could well have starred in even more thrillers quite easily. He adds a great deal to the nervous energy inherent within the story and De Palma’s tense style.

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3 'The Thin Red Line' (1998)

Director: Terrence Malick

The Thin Red Line is one of those star-studded movies that seems to have almost everyone in it… well, male actors only, given it’s set during World War II and is almost exclusively focused on a group of male U.S. soldiers fighting during the battle of Guadalcanal. Other actors who show up here, besides John Travolta, include Jim Caviezel, Woody Harrelson, Nick Nolte, Sean Penn, John Cusack, Adrien Brody, and George Clooney, to name a few.

Travolta’s only really in it near the start, but does what he needs to as a stuffy brigadier general. Importantly, the entirety of The Thin Red Line is incredible, standing out as one of the best war movies of all time while showing combat in a unique and undeniably haunting way, thanks to Terrence Malick tackling the genre in a way that only Terrence Malick could.

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2 'Face/Off' (1997)

Director: John Woo

John Woo’s a filmmaker who’s helmed some of the greatest action sequences of all time, and is generally at his best when staging scenes of over-the-top, high-impact, slow-motion-heavy, and operatic gunfights. Many of his greatest hits were made in Hong Kong, but he’s also been behind a handful of U.S. movies, with the best of those undoubtedly being Face/Off.

An undisputed action movie classic, Face/Off pairs John Travolta with Nicolas Cage, having a ridiculous – and ridiculously entertaining – plot that sees the two swapping faces, and identities; one being a detective, and the other a sociopathic terrorist. It’s high-concept filmmaking at its best and wildest, mining a stupendous amount of comedy, violence, and excitement out of a set-up that should be too stupid to work, but just does. It’s beautifully silly, and sees Travolta and Cage pretty much at their respective bests.

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1 'Pulp Fiction' (1994)

Director: Quentin Tarantino

Just about everyone involved with Pulp Fiction could count it as the best thing they were ever associated with, given just how fresh, fantastically written, funny, and stylish it was. It tells several interweaving stories all revolving around gangsters, drugs, and redemption, and was particularly notable for making John Travolta remarkably popular again, after a large number of his 1980s movies failed to make the same sort of impact his best work from the 1970s did.

Samuel L. Jackson might surpass him when it comes to being cool, but Travolta’s also playing a dopier and less adept character, and doing a fantastic – not to mention Oscar-nominated – job at it. The rest of the cast and director Quentin Tarantino also do career-best work throughout Pulp Fiction, making it not just the best movie in Travolta’s filmography, but one of the absolute best of its entire decade.

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