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John Travolta

John Travolta has had a long and storied career, running back as far as his supporting role in 1976’s Carrie. His is probably the most notable comeback from a movie star in the 1990s. He’d almost completely vanished after a string of flops in the 1980s, and even then, his biggest hit was in Look Who’s Talking, a series where he was essentially a nonentity, just set dressing for the wacky babies with the potty mouths. But we all know what happened next: in 1994, Quentin Tarantino wrote and directed one of the best American films ever made, Pulp Fiction, and got Travolta to co-star in the ensemble picture as Vincent Vega, a hitman who has to deal with the wife of his boss appropriately or else get killed. Much more happens to Vincent, but Travolta dancing with Uma Thurman at Jackrabbit Slim’s was one of the most iconic moments in the career of a man who hit it big by strutting his stuff in Saturday Night Fever.

Since that movie, Travolta’s career has not been perfect, but it has been alive and kicking, and when you have Battlefield Earth, one of the most reviled films of all time, to your credit, it’s more than just luck that keeps you working. From movies such as Get Shorty, Face/Off, Primary Colors, The Thin Red Line, and Wild Hogs, Travolta’s managed to pick enough big hits in the last 15 years to keep him going. Yes, he’s also starred in such…classics as Old Dogs, Be Cool, From Paris with Love, and Wild Hogs (successful, but not good), but John Travolta has never had such a dry spell as he did in the 1980s, and he can always give a tip of the hat to Quentin Tarantino (and Elmore Leonard, for Get Shorty) because of it. One hopes he’ll find another winner soon, but you never know.

Drew Barrymore

Who is it that Drew Barrymore should thank: Wes Craven or Adam Sandler? And what kind of question is that, right? I know, it seems crazy, but for a long time in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Drew Barrymore seemed to be going down the same route that Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears has gone down in the past few years. She was the prototypical drunken starlet, always running into paparazzi and tabloid covers. And then, in 1996, she made a cameo at the beginning of Scream, playing the first girl to get killed by the masked killer. Just over a year later, she found herself as the romantic lead to Adam Sandler in The Wedding Singer (arguably his best “dumb” comedy), which helped prove to those in Hollywood that she could be as sweet as an adult as she was as a kid.

Since then, Barrymore’s been relatively successful, even making her directorial debut last year with Whip It (yes, not a successful film, but a movie directed by any woman is worth noting and praising). She’s also helped spearhead the Charlie’s Angels franchise, which wasn’t very good, but made a lot of money. She teamed up again with Sandler in 2004 for another romantic comedy, 50 First Dates, which brought in over $120 million domestically. Her career isn’t the most successful, but it is easily one of the more cheering comebacks in Hollywood history. You may or may not be a fan of Barrymore’s always-cheerful persona, but seeing her pull herself away from her troubles is extremely encouraging. Maybe she’ll helm another movie soon; she may not be the most accomplished, but if stardom is what it takes for Hollywood to greenlight a movie directed by a woman, let’s get on it.

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