John Travolta is looking the part for his directorial debut.
The legendary actor, 72, raised eyebrows at Cannes Film Festival by wearing round glasses and a series of different colored berets while promoting his new film Propeller One-Way Night Coach, which stars his 26-year-old daughter Ella Bleu Travolta.
But, as the Grease star said in a CNN interview shared Monday, he was simply dressed to impress by channeling the look of an auteur filmmaker.
“I said, ‘I’m a director this time,” Travolta explained. “’You’re an actor, play the part of a director, look like an old-school director.’”
He continued: “So I looked up pictures from the twenties, thirties, fourties, fifties, sixties, and the old-school directors wore berets, and the glasses. And I thought, ‘That’s what I’m doing. I’m doing an homage to being a director, so I’m going to play the part of being a director.’”
Iconic directors that have sported the stereotypical French-styled look include filmmakers like Ingmar Bergman and Francis Ford Coppola.
Travolta also said that his distinct look — which included black, white, navy and brown berets— could also help him to remember the event in the future by looking back at pictures from the red carpet.
“I’ve been around for over 50 years doing movies, but I can’t tell, when I look back, the difference between the events,” he said, noting that now, “I’ll know — ‘Oh, that was Propeller One-Way Night Coach, that was Cannes, that’s when I won the Palme d’Or,’ and I’ll have a vividness of it.”
The film festival’s artistic director, Thierry Frémaux, surprised Travolta with the honorary Palme d’Or ahead of his movie’s world premiere Friday.
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Wearing a white beret, Travolta was visibly moved by the recognition and clutched his chest while accepting the award, saying: “This is beyond the Oscar. I can’t believe this. This is the last thing I expected.”
The Pulp Fiction actor wrote, directed and co-produced Propeller One-Way Night Coach, which is based on his own 1997 children’s novel of the same name. The movie follows a young aspiring pilot named Jeff and his mother as they embark on a cross-country journey to Hollywood. Ella plays a flight attendant in the film, which will begin streaming globally on Apple TV later this month.
Travolta, a flying enthusiast who has had his pilot’s license since he was 22, flew his own plane to the movie’s premiere while wearing a navy beret, as shown in a video he shared on Instagram.
