John Travolta

In Saturday Night Fever, John Travolta's Tony Manero struts down a Brooklyn street to the Bee Gees, then owns the dance floor of a disco in a white suit. The 1977 film made Travolta, then 23, the biggest new star in the country and earned him an Oscar nomination. A year later Grease made him bigger still. Then, through the 1980s, his career slowly faded, until in 1994 Quentin Tarantino cast him as the hit man Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction, and he was suddenly back.

Comebacks are written into his chart. He was born at 2:53 p.m. on February 18, 1954, in Englewood, New Jersey, a time from his birth certificate, and his Sun is at the very end of Aquarius, in the eighth house, with Venus in Pisces there as well. The eighth is the house of death and rebirth, crisis and regeneration. A Sun in the eighth tends to describe a life with dramatic falls and recoveries, and few Hollywood careers have collapsed and revived as visibly as Travolta's.

He grew up the youngest of six children in a theatrical family; his mother was an actress and drama teacher. He dropped out of high school at 16 to act, worked in musical theater, including a touring production of Grease, and became famous as the swaggering student Vinnie Barbarino on the sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter.

Mars in Sagittarius sits in the fifth house, the area of performance, pleasure and play. Mars brings physical energy, and Sagittarius adds exuberance and movement. It suits the dancer, and the fifth-house Mars fits the moments that made him: the disco floor, the "You're the One That I Want" finale, and the twist contest with Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction.

Cancer is on his Ascendant, the sign of family, home and protectiveness. Travolta has always been known as a devoted family man, and his family has also known great loss. His son Jett died in 2009 at the age of 16, and his wife, the actress Kelly Preston, died of breast cancer in 2020. He has spoken about grief with notable openness.

Jupiter in Gemini sits in the eleventh house, the area of networks and wider interests, and his great passion outside film is aviation. He is a licensed pilot who has flown large jets, served as a goodwill ambassador for the Australian airline Qantas, and lived for years in a Florida home with its own runway.

After Pulp Fiction came Get Shorty, Face/Off and a string of hits through the late 1990s. The eighth-house Sun had done what it does: taken a career that seemed finished and given it a second life.