John Travolta is hot stuff on the dance floor but keeps his cool in his latest film. He tells Steve Pratt why he's still a high flyer in Hollywood.

At his surprise 50th birthday party, Hollywood actor John Travolta was presented with a peanut butter and chocolate cake in the shape of an airplane. Then Carly Simon serenaded him with her song You're So Vain, changing the lyrics You Fly Planes.

While others have lawns, rockeries and garden gnomes, he has parking spaces for his Boeing 707 and other aircraft in his back garden. He even named his son Jett. And, in the wake of 9/11, he flew himself round the world promoting the benefits of air travel to help restore confidence in the industry

The evidence suggests that you could call Travolta plane crazy and not be sued. He's a fully qualified pilot well able to make a living flying commercial airlines if his movie career ever ended.

That seems unlikely. Admittedly, he went through a bad patch after the megahits Saturday Night Fever and Grease propelled him to superstardom in the 1970s. Then, a decade ago, his Oscar-nominated turn as a hit man in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction brought him back with a bang. He's reached the stage where no matter how well his movies do with critics or audiences - and his output is still very much hit and miss in equal measures - he's earned a permanent place in the Hollywood firmament.

As befits his iconic status, he's regarded as the epitome of cool. How fitting that his latest movie, a sequel to Get Shorty, is called Be Cool. He accepts the title with good grace, while admitting that not everyone sees him as cool.

"There's a lineage to cool," he explains. "Cool, initially, was to be fearless and to keep your cool, and was associated with early film icons, like Marlon Brando and James Dean.

"Then it evolved into being hip, cool dressing and cool music, then into being comfortable with yourself. Now it has many definitions, I'm probably the last definition. In movies, it's all contrived for me."

It's different at home with his two children, Jett, 12, and four-and-a-half-year-old Ella, who see him as any other silly father. "My daughter goes, 'oh, dad, don't stop it' if I ever sing or dance or do any of that. That's what I did with my mother and father. Just wait until she gets to her teenaged years, then I'm in trouble," he says.

There is one aspect of Travolta's life which he reckons can be classed as cool - his love of flying. "My planes are cool, in the back yard," he says. "I kissed the kids goodbye at the pool two days ago, walked 20 steps and got on the plane and flew to London. That's cool."

His Florida home called, appropriately enough, Jumbolair, offers proof of his high-flying lifestyle. He moved there from a fly-in community near Daytona after neighbours complained about the noise of his jet airplanes.

The new house and mini-airstrip is located off the main airstrip of the airport at Ocala, so he can taxi his jets to and from the parking spaces after take-off and landing.

Be Cool sees him reprising the role of Chili Palmer, the debt collector turned Hollywood film producer from the 1995 hit movie Get Shorty. This time, Chili tries his hand in the music industry as well as strutting his stuff on the dance floor again with his Pulp Fiction partner Uma Thurman.

"I wanted to dance in the first movie but they didn't think it was fitting," he explains. "But the second one being about the music industry, it seemed a natural. I've always wanted to dance to the Brazilian sounds. At first, Uma was resisting that sound. But, when the Black Eyed Peas had this rendition of Sexy, people were convinced it was pretty cool.

"I had the same issue in Pulp Fiction. I told Quentin there were other dances than the Twist. When I grew up there was the Batman, the Swim, the Hitchhiker and the Cowboy. I said we could mix it up, so basically we did the same thing here.

"We mixed it up with traditional 50s, 60s dances, cha-cha, samba, foxtrot. We were going to do it anyway, I wanted Chili to dance and Uma was a bonus, whichever way you look at it."

He received the nod of approval from no less a person than Sean Connery after the first Chili Palmer movie was released. "I got a call from him and he was going, 'Sean, Get Shorty, I loved it'," recalls Travolta, assuming Connery's Scottish accent to tell the story.

"He went on and on. He was going to the theatre to see it again. And I said, 'I think you liked it, Sean, because it reminded you of you'. The character is fearless and effortlessly cool, dapper and elegant, fun and romantic. It's all the things the Bond character is, except in the US, where there's no character like that.

"So, I thought Elmore Leonard wrote these attributes, why not get the US answer to it. That was my connection in my own mind. The character loves movies, loves the arts and music. It was a great way to incorporate all that."

Coolness aside, Travolta has a few other things in common with Chili's character as he champions a new singer, played by real life recording star Christina Milian. "I can identify with his reaction to the artists, his admiration for them. I do that. I'm a fan. I openly admire other artists," he says.

He thinks he'd also react compassionately to people who aren't particularly good, as Chili does to an acting monologue spoken by a bodyguard who wants to be an actor. "I feel like I want to look at what is good about it," he says.

"I would've looked at him very calm and non-reactive, and given gentle advice. I love the idea that Chili would sooner kick his ass than insult his talents. If it's one favourite quality of the character, it's that. I'd pounce on you and have no qualms about that, but wouldn't hurt your feelings. I love that.

"There's nothing I don't like about Chili. I just wish I could be more like him, as fearless in all situations, but I think that's nearly impossible."

His next role may cause his children even more embarrassment. He reveals that he's been offered the part of the mother in Hairspray, the film of the stage musical based on the John Waters film. "I've no idea if I'm taking it. This is playing THE mother, not playing a man as the mother." says Travolta.

One role he won't be reprising is Danny Zuko in high school musical Grease. He's constantly asked about rumour that he and Olivia Newton-John are getting together again in a follow-up film. "No, we're leaving that alone. It must be left alone. You must stop asking that," he says.

* Be Cool (12A) is showing in cinemas now.

* The season of Travolta films continues on five with Look Who's Talking (6.45pm, tonight), Mad City (12midnight, tonight), and A Civil Action (Wednesday, 9pm). Grease is being shown today at 2.45pm on ITV1.