THE LIFE, DEATH AND REBIRTH OF A

John Travolta is wearing a blue and white cotton seersucker suit, a white polo shirt and a broad grin. It is summer in the city and he is still glorying in the success of his resur-rected career. Since Pulp Fiction brought him back to life in a hail of profanity and bullets, he has been building, movie by movie, a protective wall around his professional life. He wants to be in control, to dictate and be the master of his future.

He gave a demonstration of his new power this summer when he walked out on a major movie, The Double, after squabbles with director Roman Polanski. Travolta shrugged off the threat of a 50 million dollar lawsuit and finally saw Polanski replaced.

But no matter how bright the future looks, Travolta can't entirely escape his traumatic past. His smile vanishes as he reveals how a moving scene in his latest film brought back powerful and painful memories.

In Phenomenon, to be released in Britain at the end of this month, he plays George Malley, a car mechanic who suddenly and inexplicably turns into a genius. The role has resonances of Jimmy Stewart in It's A Wonderful Life. It's a great performance from Travolta, and it does nothing to spoil the film to reveal that the story progresses inexorably towards Malley's death in the arms of his co-star Kyra Sedgwick.

This emotional deathbed scene is an uncanny parallel of a tragedy in the life of the young Travolta, when his film star girlfriend Diana Hyland died in his arms. She was 42 and suffering from cancer. He was 23 and heartbroken. He still believes their May-to-September affair would have led to marriage had fate not intervened. He's now happily married to actress Kelly Preston, but admits that he still dreams about Diana - as he does of his late mother and father. He drops his voice as he searches for words to describe his feelings.

"The movie did parallel . . . it wasn't dissimilar to what happened before," he says. "The way I die in the movie was not unlike how Diana died in my arms. You've got to understand that the whole script was riddled with emotion. You couldn't get on the set without laughing or crying . . . the movie was so beautifully written.

"In the bed, in every take, it was easy to contact that real emotion. Throughout the movie it was like that. There was a sense of deja vu. I had experienced death in my life - my parents, girlfriend, loved ones, friends. I've witnessed that, so I was kind of able to identify with the loss. I've learned that death is part of life and I'd experienced the reality in playing that aspect of the character.

"I think I've worked around those tragic moments like everyone has to. As you get older you lose people, but I think that I had a source of experience to identify with. I don't like losing people. It's painful, frustrating to feel that you can't keep Mom and Dad. When I read the script I cried very hard. I threw it across the room because I was so moved by it."

In the film, George Malley's overnight supernatural abilities alienate his small-town neighbours and put government authorities on to a wary alert. But his magical personality sorts it all out.

"He leaves no stone unturned before he goes, and in my own life if I knew I was going to pass away I'd love to sit down and resolve every issue so I could go peacefully," says Travolta. "I think that was the beauty of that character - that he could leave resolved. Life was better because he existed. If I died tomorrow and I knew that life was betterbecause I existed I could go away feeling better. The secret was being at peace with death."

As he sits far back in his chair, relaxed and confident in a Manhat-tan hotel suite, Travolta, toned and trim at 42, appears to have not a concern in the world. He is still certain he did the right thing in leaving the Paris set of Roman Polanski's film The Double, even though he faced the kind of legal threat that bankrupted Kim Bas- inger when she walked out on a role.

He is calm and slow as he talks in detail for the first time about the multi-million dollar debacle. He says he was looking forward to working with Polanski, director of Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby, but when he arrived in France the script had changed beyond recognition. His concern over his 20 million dollar role coincided with a family health crisis when doctors said his four-year-old son Jett needed an ear operation. So he flew home to America to be with his son and never went back. Faxes and lawyers' letters criss-crossed the Atlantic and when it became clear that Travolta wasn't returning, the film company hired Steve Martin to replace him. When that didn't work out the project was abandoned, and Travolta was threatened with a 50 million dollar legal action. Now the project is back on, Polanski has left, and the producers are talking to Travolta again.

"I had more to lose than everybody," he says. "Not only the salary, which was very nice, but the litigation. The new interpretation was a broad comedy where I had in mind more of a Being There (the 1979 Peter Sellers film) type of subtle comedy. Then it spread more into slapstick and I didn't know how to do it the way it was presented to me.

"You have to agree on the movie you're making. If you're offered A and then you're given B, you say, 'Wait a minute'. If you're at a restaurant: 'I ordered A. You gave me B. It's not what I ordered'."

The Double is now on the back burner, but life goes on for Travolta. His next project is the action-adventure Face Off with Nicolas Cage then he works alongside wife Kelly in thriller called Common Ground. He will also star in Battleship Earth, based on a novel by L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the Scientology cult of which Travolta is a prominent member. "It's set 3,000 years in the future - it's Star Wars personified." he says.

Travolta, who has survived his own personal star wars, admits he has concerns about the future, but leans forward with a grin and whispers: "But I'm optimistic."

Douglas Thompson is the author of Fever: A Biography Of John Travolta, to be published by Boxtree on September 4, price pounds 9.99.

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