Known for: Saturday Night Fever and Grease
Net worth: $170 million
“ Night fever, night fever / We know how to do it ” –Bee Gees. John Travolta certainly did! He was the face and the moves of that groovy ’70s disco tune. Between the Bee Gees and John T., Saturday Night Fever was a monumental hit. Disco-mania peaked with the release of the film, and his role as a working-class disco dancer won him both a Golden Globe and an Academy Award nomination.
In the meantime, snagging the lead as Dany Zuko when he was just 18, Travolta toured with the 1971Broadway hit musical “Grease.” Several years later Grease, the movie, opened to wild success. Onto Urban Cowboy. A few flops followed. When the year 1980 rolled in, disco music and John Travolta tanked. After starring in Tarantino’s hit flick Pulp Fiction, Travolta’s career bounced high on a rebound with a box office and cult-following success, plus another Oscar nomination came his way. Movies like Get Shorty, Face/Off, Battlefield Earth, and Primary Colors have kept him in Hollywood’s good graces since then.
Tommy Lee Jones
Known for: The Fugitive, MIB and Coal Miner’s Daughter
Net worth: $85 million
At Harvard, where Tommy Lee Jones roomed with Al Gore and graduated cum laude in 1969, he played varsity football, as well. As an all-league offensive guard, he participated in the Harvard vs. Yale game known as “The Tie,” the most famous game in Ivy League history. He also appeared in undergrad theater productions. Students would find him in the sports locker room suiting up in costume for rehearsal! Acting won out. Now we know him as the big screen’s worst tough guy in films like MIB and The Fugitive .
In between stage productions, Jones starred on daytime soap One Life to Live. It was not exactly his career dream, but the part led him on the path to the podium where he accepted an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in The Fugitive. It also scored him a sequel. He became one of the best paid and most highly sought-after actors in the industry. Like many Hollywood greats, he’s tried his hand at directing and producing. His theatrical feature film debut, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada earned him the Best Actor Award at Cannes.
Al Pacino
Known for: The Godfather and Scarface
Net worth: $165 million
Throughout the Seventies and Eighties, Al Pacino played one badass mother-flipper after another. He got his start with The Godfather . Francis Ford Coppola happened to catch Pacino in The Panic in Needle Park as a heroin addict, and he could not, not-imagine Pacino’s face as mafia boss Michael Corleone. Good call. The performance remains one of cinema’s greatest achievements. He received his first Oscar nomination, of many, in that breakout film. The Godfather franchise would make him a very wealthy film legend. It’s a stark contrast to his harsh beginnings coming of age in the Bronx. A bit of a trouble maker, smoking and drinking at age nine, you can bet he got into his share of street fights. The acting was a strong interest by middle school. He began studying method acting and getting parts, but the struggles continued, scraping together bus fares to get to auditions.
Pacino received his first Best Actor Oscar nomination for Serpico, but he didn’t win the Best Actor Award until 1993 for Scent of a Woman playing the part of a blind ex-Army officer. He starred in other notable films including,... .And Justice for All, Dog Day Afternoon and Frankie and Johnny. He’s not done. Look out for these 2019 flicks: Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in Martin Scorsese’s film, The Irishman, and Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood with Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Pacino.
Barbra Streisand
Known for: Yentl and “Evergreen”
Net worth: $400 million
“Hello, gorgeous.” Thus spoke Barbara Streisand as she greeted her first Oscar. Decked out in a flowing hippie-style sheer jumpsuit, with pants so flared she tripped on them climbing onto the stage, she received the Best Actress Award for Funny Girl , tying with Katherine Hepburn. Her second Academy Award came the following year for Best Original Song, “Evergreen,” the theme song to A Star is Born . Her list of Grammys, Golden Globes and other awards trails on. As a rare member of the EGOT artists club, she’s got a Tony too. Along with eight Grammys, her recording career produced 150 million album sales worldwide. She’s more than music. In 1983, Streisand pioneered the role of women in the film industry when she wrote, produced, directed and starred in Yentl . Until then, no other woman had achieved this.
Her beginnings were not as grand. After the sudden death of her father when she was a year old, she and her brother teetered on the brink of poverty growing up in Brooklyn, New York. With her mom unavailable working long hours as a bookkeeper, she struggled through childhood but gradually found value in her voice. Everyone noticed it. Now she gives back. The Streisand Foundation has raised $25 million and has funded over a thousand grants toward causes ranging from nuclear disarmament to women’s issues. Politically, she supports the environment and disses President Trump.
Harvey Keitel
Known for: Mean Streets and Taxi Driver
Net worth: $45 million
Brooklyn-raised, Harvey Keitel grew up in an immigrant family of Ashkenazic Jews during the 1940s. He received his bachelor’s degree from the prestigious Actor’s Studio in N.Y.C. and continued to study acting at the HB Studio under Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg. Shortly after, he hooked up with a young Martin Scorsese in Who’s That Knocking at My Door , effectively sparking a long-term collaboration on various projects. When Keitel starred with Robert De Niro in Scorsese’s 1973 Mean Streets , it became the breakthrough film for all three men. Teaming up again in the neo-noir psych-thriller Taxi Driver (1976), they gladly found the film showered with praise. The heavy-hitting young cast included the likes of Cybil Shepherd, Jodie Foster, and Peter Boyle. Nominations from the Academy and Cannes helped distinguish the controversial film as one of the best movies of all time.
Keitel was just getting started. Teaming up with Scorsese’s screenwriter, Paul Schrader, Keitel starred in his 1977 and 1978 directorial debuts. However, he fell into a slump in the ’80s, playing lackluster roles in Copkiller and in the mafia comedy Wise Guys. In the ’90s, things started picking back up. His performance as Mr. White in Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs jolted his career back into gear. He continued to work with Tarantino and Scorsese and began working with Spike Lee. He was in Thelma and Louise, Chinatown, and The Last Temptation of Christ, another controversial Scorsese film.