Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that can help answer the question.
Query: What was the first movie John Travolta starred in?
John Joseph Travolta (born February 18, 1954) is an American actor, film producer, dancer, and singer. Travolta first became known in the 1970s, appearing on the television series "Welcome Back, Kotter" (1975–1979) and starring in the box office successes "Saturday Night Fever" (1977) and "Grease" (1978). His acting career declined through the 1980s, but enjoyed a resurgence in the 1990s with his role in "Pulp Fiction" (1994), and he has since starred in films such as "Get Shorty", "Broken Arrow", "Face/Off", "Swordfish", "Be Cool", "Wild Hogs", "Hairspray", and "The Taking of Pelham 123".
He first came to fame in 1967 with his performance as Buck Barrow in "Bonnie and Clyde", when he received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. His major subsequent films include: "I Never Sang for My Father" (1970), when he received his second Best Supporting Actor nomination; "The French Connection" (1971) and "French Connection II" (1975), when he played Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle; "The Poseidon Adventure" (1972); "The Conversation" (1974); "Superman: The Movie" (1978), when he played arch-villain Lex Luthor; "Hoosiers" (1986); and "Mississippi Burning" (1988), when he received his second Best Actor nomination.
Tarkovsky's films include "Ivan's Childhood" (1962), "Andrei Rublev" (1966), "Solaris" (1972), "Mirror" (1975), and "Stalker" (1979). He directed the first five of his seven feature films in the Soviet Union; his last two films, "Nostalghia" (1983) and "The Sacrifice" (1986), were produced in Italy and Sweden, respectively. The films "Andrei Rublev", "Solaris", "Mirror", and "Stalker" are regularly listed among the greatest films of all time.
Tarkovsky's first feature film was "Ivan's Childhood" in 1962. He had inherited the film from director Eduard Abalov, who had to abort the project. The film earned Tarkovsky international acclaim and won the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival in the year 1962. In the same year, on 30 September, his first son Arseny (called Senka in Tarkovsky's diaries) Tarkovsky was born.
Jared Leto is an American entertainer with an extensive career in film, music, and television. He made his debut with minor roles in the television shows "Camp Wilder" (1992) and "Almost Home" (1993). He achieved recognition in 1994 for his role as Jordan Catalano in the teen drama television series "My So-Called Life". The show was praised for its portrayal of adolescence and gained a cult following, despite being canceled after only one season. The same year, he made his television film debut starring alongside Alicia Silverstone in "Cool and the Crazy". Leto's first film role was in the 1995 drama "How to Make an American Quilt". He later co-starred with Christina Ricci in "The Last of the High Kings" (1996) and received a supporting role in "Switchback" (1997). In 1997, Leto starred in the biopic "Prefontaine" in which he played the role of Olympic hopeful Steve Prefontaine. His portrayal received positive reviews from critics and is often considered his breakthrough role. The following year, Leto starred together with Alicia Witt in the horror "Urban Legend". He then acted alongside Sean Penn and Adrien Brody in the war film "The Thin Red Line" (1998). After playing supporting roles in "Black and White" and "Girl, Interrupted", Leto portrayed Angel Face in "Fight Club" (1999), which has since became a cult film.
When he was just 23 years of age, Fuller first met the not-so-famous actor, John Smith, along with another young, new TV actor, Doug McClure (Drury's future co-star on "The Virginian"), in the movie "Friendly Persuasion," where he only had a limited line. The two began to develop a lifelong friendship, in 1956. At the same approximate time when co-starring with Smith in "Laramie," Fuller also guest-starred with Smith on an episode of "Cimmaron City."
The studio's first live-action film was "Treasure Island" (1950). Animated films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar are also released by Walt Disney Pictures. The studio has released four films that have received an Academy Award for Best Picture nomination: "Mary Poppins" (1964), "Beauty and the Beast" (1991), "Up" (2009), and "Toy Story 3" (2010).
The musical film adaptation "Mary Poppins" was released by Walt Disney Pictures in 1964. Primarily based on the original 1934 novel of the same name, it also lifted elements from the 1935 sequel "Mary Poppins Comes Back". The novels were loved by Disney's daughters when they were children, and Disney had spent 20 years trying to purchase the film rights to "Mary Poppins", which included visits to Travers at her home in London. In 1961, Travers arrived in Los Angeles on a flight from London, her first-class ticket having been paid for by Disney, and he finally succeeded in purchasing the rights. Travers was an adviser in the production, but she disapproved of the Poppins character in its Disney version, with harsher aspects diluted; she felt ambivalent about the music; and she so hated the use of animation that she ruled out any further adaptations of the series. She received no invitation to the film's star-studded première until she "embarrassed a Disney executive into extending one". At the after-party, she said loudly “Well. The first thing that has to go is the animation sequence.” Disney replied, "Pamela, the ship has sailed", and walked away.
Released by TriStar Pictures in 1989, the film grossed almost $3 million domestically, and has since become a cult film like its predecessor. In 2003, it received a brief issuing on DVD by Artisan Entertainment in a full frame presentation, but the release quickly went out of print and has since become a rare collector's item.
Tarkovsky's teacher and mentor was Mikhail Romm, who taught many film students who would later become influential film directors. In 1956 Tarkovsky directed his first student short film, "The Killers", from a short story of Ernest Hemingway. The short film "There Will Be No Leave Today" and the screenplay "Concentrate" followed in 1958 and 1959.
In 1965, he directed the film "Andrei Rublev" about the life of Andrei Rublev, the fifteenth-century Russian icon painter. "Andrei Rublev" was not, except for a single screening in Moscow in 1966, immediately released after completion due to problems with Soviet authorities. Tarkovsky had to cut the film several times, resulting in several different versions of varying lengths. The film was widely released in the Soviet Union in a cut version in 1971.
"First Contact" is the first documentary in what later became known as "The Highland Trilogy". The other two films are "Joe Leahy's Neighbours" (1989) and "Black Harvest" (1992). These three films, between them, have won some thirty major awards, included each film winning both the Grand Prix at the Festival Cinéma du Réel in Paris and AFI Award for Best Documentary.
"The Last Hurrah", (Columbia, 1958), again set in present-day of the 1950s, starred Spencer Tracy, who had made his first film appearance in Ford's "Up The River" in 1930. Tracy plays an aging politician fighting his last campaign, with Jeffrey Hunter as his nephew. Katharine Hepburn reportedly facilitated a rapprochement between the two men, ending a long-running feud, and she convinced Tracy to take the lead role, which had originally been offered to Orson Welles (but was turned down by Welles' agent without his knowledge, much to his chagrin). It did considerably better business than either of Ford's two preceding films, grossing $950,000 in its first year although cast member Anna Lee stated that Ford was "disappointed with the picture" and that Columbia had not permitted him to supervise the editing.
The Boston Tea Party is a 1908 silent film directed by Edwin S. Porter, and produced and distributed by Edison Studios. The film is a fictionalized depiction of the events of the Boston Tea Party. It was the film debut of actor Charles Stanton Ogle.
His first acting role was at the Pasadena Playhouse, alongside future Academy Award–winner Gene Hackman. After two years there, Hackman headed for New York City, with Hoffman soon following. Hoffman, Hackman, and Robert Duvall lived together in the 1960s, all three of them focused on finding acting jobs. Hackman remembers, "The idea that any of us would do well in films simply didn't occur to us. We just wanted to work." During this period, Hoffman got occasional television bit parts, including commercials but, needing income, he briefly left acting to teach.
Created as a replacement for a prior Disney character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Mickey first appeared in the short "Plane Crazy", debuting publicly in the short film "Steamboat Willie" (1928), one of the first sound cartoons. He went on to appear in over 130 films, including "The Band Concert" (1935), "Brave Little Tailor" (1938), and "Fantasia" (1940). Mickey appeared primarily in short films, but also occasionally in feature-length films. Ten of Mickey's cartoons were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, one of which, "Lend a Paw", won the award in 1942. In 1978, Mickey became the first cartoon character to have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
The first film in the franchise, "Spider-Man", was released to US theaters on May 3, 2002. Its story follows Peter Parker (played by Tobey Maguire), a high-school student who turns to crime-fighting in New York, under the alias of Spider-Man, after developing spider-like powers. The film sees him develop friendships with Harry Osborn (James Franco) and his love interest, Mary Jane Watson (portrayed by Kirsten Dunst). "Spider-Man" was praised for staying faithful to the comic series and for being an enjoyable movie, with Joe Morgenstern of "The Wall Street Journal" finding the film to be "unusually good" for its genre. Raimi's 2002 release topped the box office with ticket revenue totaling to $114.8 million. By the end of its theatrical run, it had grossed over $820 million.
The film appeared twice on "Mystery Science Theater 3000". Its first appearance was in 1988, when "MST3K" was still a local program airing on KTMA. Its second appearance was in 1991, after it became a nationally-aired program.
Blaxploitation is a mix of the words black and exploitation. It makes a point to enforce stereotypes that have been afflicted on African Americans by the so-called white media. The first movie to be considered blaxploitation was "Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song" (1971). Melvin Van Peebles directed, produced, and took the lead role of this hyper sexual film. It is about a male prostitute who is out to fight "[the man]" (white oppression). It spanned a new type of film genre that evolved all the way to what is now the urban blaxploitation horror films of the 21st century.
Craven's directorial debut, the film was made on a modest budget of $87,000, and was filmed in New York City and rural Connecticut in 1971. It was released theatrically in the United States on August 30, 1972, and was a major box office success, grossing over $3 million domestically. Although its confrontational violence resulted in its being heavily censored and sometimes banned in other countries, the film was generally well received by critics. The film was remade under the same title in 2009.
Richard St. John Harris (1 October 1930 – 25 October 2002) was an Irish actor and singer. He appeared on stage and in many films, appearing as Frank Machin in "This Sporting Life", for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor, King Arthur in the 1967 film "Camelot" and the subsequent 1981 revival of the show. He played an aristocrat captured by Native Americans in "A Man Called Horse" (1970), a gunfighter in Clint Eastwood's Western film "Unforgiven" (1992), Emperor Marcus Aurelius in "Gladiator" (2000), and Albus Dumbledore in the first two "Harry Potter" films: "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" (2001) and "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" (2002), the latter of which was his final film role. Harris had a number-one hit in Australia and Canada and a top ten hit in the United Kingdom, Ireland and United States with his 1968 recording of Jimmy Webb's song "MacArthur Park".
Travolta's wife Kelly Preston also appeared in one scene, playing Terl's "baldish Psychlo girlfriend" Chirk. Travolta originally saw himself in the role of Jonnie, but by the time the movie was actually made, Travolta felt he was too old to play the role, and took the role of the main villain instead. Travolta's role in the film required what he described as an amazing physical transformation: "I wear a tall head apparatus with strange hair. I have amber eyes and talons for hands. It's quite remarkable ... I'm on 4-foot stilts." To star in the film, Travolta turned down the movie "The Shipping News" and postponed production on "Standing Room Only".
Travolta's first screen role in California was as a fall victim in "Emergency!" (S2E2), in September 1972, but his first significant movie role was as Billy Nolan, a bully who was goaded into playing a prank on Sissy Spacek's character in the horror film "Carrie" (1976). Around the same time, he landed his star-making role as Vinnie Barbarino in the TV sitcom "Welcome Back, Kotter" (1975–1979), in which his sister, Ellen, also occasionally appeared (as Arnold Horshack's mother). The show aired on ABC.
The subsequent film adaptation, released in 2000, was a commercial failure and was criticized as one of the "worst films ever made".
From the book's release, Scientologist and science-fiction fan John Travolta aimed to bring Hubbard's book to the big screen in a series of two movies with himself playing Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, as well as producing. A first film was planned to be released in 1983, but due to rising costs, trouble in finding a studio that would fund the project, and Travolta's waning star power, the project was cancelled. It was finally produced by Franchise Pictures and released in 2000 as "Battlefield Earth". Directed by Roger Christian, it starred Travolta (who by now felt he was too old to play the hero) as Terl, Barry Pepper as Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, and Forest Whitaker as Ker.
Since 2010, Travolta has starred mostly in action films and thrillers. In 2016, he returned to TV in the first season of the anthology series "American Crime Story", titled "", in which he played lawyer Robert Shapiro.