Travolta goes the whole hog (From Times Series)

Travolta goes the whole hog

12:21am Thursday 12th April 2007 in

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John Tavolta reckons he's already got every toy he needs to cope with a midlife crisis, he tells Steve Pratt

IT was the night Danny Zuko danced with James Bond. John Travolta tripping the light fantastic with Princess Diana was well-photographed and much-reported. Less well-known is how Sean Connery became his dancing partner.

Travolta gained a reputation as a good mover on the dance floor thanks to the roles that made him famous, disco-dancing Danny Manero in Saturday Night Fever and rocking-and-rolling Danny Zuko in Grease.

In his latest movie, Wild Hogs, he teaches William H Macy a few dance moves to attract ladies. He wasn't bad, says Travolta, but as far as men are concerned Sean Connery was his favourite dance partner. "It was at a big party for Frank Sinatra, there was every old-fashioned Hollywood name there," he recalls.

"My wife and I were about to leave and Sean said 'John, where are you going?'. I said 'I've got to go, I'm working tomorrow morning', and he said, 'not before you dance with me, you're not'. There I was, dancing with James Bond, with everybody watching.

"Since dancing with Princess Diana, I'm a hot ticket as a dance partner, male or female."

But who led - Travolta or Connery? "Being that he's my senior and he's Bond, I let him lead. I'm no fool," says Travolta.

Wild Hogs finds him, Macy, Tim Allen and Martin Lawrence as friends responding to their mid-life crisis by getting on their motorbikes and hitting the highway on a cross-country road trip. Ray Liotta also features as the leader of a biker gang with whom they clash en route.

The obvious question - the day after Travolta, Allen and Liotta roared along the red carpet on their motorbikes at the London premiere - was how they're dealing with getting older. Travolta's felt adventurous his whole life, not just with the onset of middle age. "From the time I was a kid, I had a wanderlust," he says. "I always wanted to travel, in any form - by plane, train, boat, car or motorcycle. Now I think that if I ever do have a mid-life crisis, I have all the toys to turn to quickly."

For Allen, the voice of Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story, the only time it affected him was when he turned 50 and his brother sent him a retirement magazine. "It didn't occur to me until I saw that, I got really depressed for about a day," he says.

"I think Bob Hope once said 'if you don't know how old you are how old would you be?' I've stayed about 11 years old, really."

Wild Hogs has been a big box-office success in the US, which Allen attributes to the clever casting. "Seeing our poster, you want to see these four guys on a trip, no matter what we did they cast us beautifully. You want to see this group of people doing what they're doing," he says.

"It's a real simple movie, like some of the best comedies are. We don't overthink it."

Despite playing the tough leader of a motorcycle gang, Liotta wasn't an experienced rider before the film. "The best way to learn anything is through a movie, because you have so much time to do it and you have great people teaching you," he says. "They had tons of bikes, we started out on the dirt on little bikes and gradually worked our way up."

Allen is a sports bike rider. "Because of this movie, I'm going to go to superbike school, because I want to learn. It's actually more interesting to me, the Harleys are wonderful for long distance cruising but to me they're a little dangerous when it comes to manoeuvring them," he says.

More dangerous, perhaps, was the scene where he had to smack a bull on his behind. Several animals were used, with the trainers getting them tired before putting the actors in the corral. "My daughter was on set with us one day and a bull went by us at speed with cowboys chasing it. It had gored one of the horses and just took off down the road," recalls Allen.

"I thought it was a good thing that wasn't the one we were slapping, because that would have made it a whole different movie."

He also had to contend with Travolta's playfulness. Allen says the actors have a lot of mutual respect for each other, with everyone having something they do pretty well. Travolta, he adds, is "pretty aggressive on a bike - ramming me, he thought that was real fun, he'd chase me around".

Travolta calls Allen an antagoniser. "You have to drop the gauntlet at some time after all those jokes at our expense. He would rev the bike until it was deafening. I couldn't get off my bike to handle him so I had to bump into him - lots," he says.

It was his idea to get Peter Fonda, the original Easy Rider, to make a cameo appearance in the film. "I was 14 when he arrived on the screen in Easy Rider. It would be like me turning up showing up in a white suit and a black shirt in some dance movie 20 years from now, it has significance. I knew it would, even though it addresses a certain generation. It worked like a dream," says Travolta.

With the success of the film, the Wild Hogs may ride again. "We all thought the movie was going to do around $20m which is a very respectable opening weekend. It's a big success if you do that," says Travolta.

"We woke up to $37.7m, which broke something like five records in a row. Sunday night, the movie's been out two days and I get a call that I'm getting any offer for the sequel on Monday.

"I said 'come on, let us enjoy a week'. They were already on it on Sunday night. So, what we say to that is, let's see a script. But I know the boys want to be together again."

* Wild Hogs (12) is now showing in cinemas.