‘A carefully orchestrated symphony’: Hollywood’s greatest comebacks, from John Travolta to Demi Moore

“A unique twist is that after 20 years, Brando had become a recluse, doing only cameo roles, when director Andrew Bergman convinced him to ‘come back’ as a mafia boss in a film,” Cairns tells the BBC. Brando agreed, but only if he could base the character on Don Corleone, so, in a parody of his historic role in The Godfather, he was “discovered” again, surprising critics and audiences alike. A skilled comedian.”

One man to revive a career

The saint of Hollywood comebacks is Quentin Tarantino. The most important miracle he ever performed was with John Travolta. By the end of the 1980s, the star of Grease and Saturday Night Fever was reduced to appearing in the Look Who’s Talking films, a series of family comedies in which the actors voiced the thoughts of children and pets. The third film in the series, Look Who’s Talking Now, was a box office bomb in 1993. But less than a year later, Travolta appeared in theaters as black-suited Vincent Vega in Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. An Oscar nomination followed, and he was the coolest man in Tinseltown once again.

That’s not to say Travolta was the only one who benefited from this choice: capturing fallen stars was good for Tarantino’s reputation, too. “When he brings in a forgotten or underrated actor from the attic — Travolta, Pam Grier, Robert Forster, Kurt Russell, Don Johnson — I often feel like I’m exaggerating somewhat, as if he’s shaming me for not appreciating these actors,” says Shawn Levy, Author of biographies of Jerry Lewis, Robert De Niro, Paul Newman, and others: “Career and ability are what define people.” “I don’t think being their savior, so to speak, means to him as much as proving that he himself is a scientist who loves their undervalued abilities or actions. I imagine him scanning through his VHS collection and looking for some sort of thing.” A website that is not dead yet to find artists that it can show off in future projects.”