John Travolta Explains His Viral Cannes Look After It Sparked A Frenzy Of Hilarious Reactions

John Travolta, 72, sparked quite the chatter after sporting a beret in some of his recent public appearances at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival.

While some fans praised him for going vintage with his style, the Pulp Fiction actor found himself on the receiving end of “bald” and “toupe” jokes because of the beret look. A few even said he was “unrecognizable.”

On May 18, he addressed the buzz around his new look, revealing that it is linked to his upcoming directorial debut, Propeller One-Way Night Coach, which also features his daughter, Ella Bleu Travolta.

John Travolta sported three different berets paired with rimmed spectacles, a mustache, and a chinstrap beard during the Cannes Film Festival, which began on May 12 at the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès and will end on May 23.

On May 15, he shared a video on social media with Ella, 26, announcing that he was heading to Cannes for the world premiere of Propeller One-Way Night Coach. He wore a navy blue beret and black-rimmed sunglasses as he landed in France in a plane he piloted himself.

Later that day, he changed into an ivory-white beret and gold-rimmed glasses for the event, where he was presented with an honorary Cannes Palme d’Or, the equivalent of a lifetime achievement award. The next day, he wore a black beret and black-rimmed glasses at the photo call for his movie.

“The old school directors wore berets and glasses. And I thought, that's what I'm doing,” Travolta explained in an interview with CNN on May 18.

“I've been around for over 50 years doing movies, but I can't tell when I look back, the difference between the events, and I said, ‘I'm a director this time. You're an actor, play the part of a director, look like an old school director.’”

“So I looked up pictures from the '20, '30s, '40s, '50, '60s, and the old-school directors wore berets, and glasses, and I thought, ‘That's what I'm doing. I'm gonna do an homage to being a director,” he continued.

“So I'm gonna play the part of being a director, and then when I look back, I'll know, ‘Oh, that was Propeller One-Way Night Coach, that was Cannes, that was when I won the Palme d'Or.' And I will have vividness of it.”

The Palme d'Or (French for "Golden Palm") is the highest prize awarded to the director of the best feature film in the official competition at the Cannes Film Festival. It is widely considered one of the most prestigious and coveted awards in the film industry, with Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, and Quentin Tarantino among its recipients.

Even though John Travolta received an honorary Palme d’Or, he was shocked and then delighted to have received the award.

On May 15, Festival head Thierry Frémaux surprised the Grease star with the prestigious honor onstage at the Debussy Theater, calling him “one of the greatest actors” deserving of the award.

“I can't believe this. This is the last thing I expected,” Travolta said while receiving the award, visibly teary-eyed. “You said this would be a special night, but I didn’t think you meant this. This is a humbling moment. This is beyond the Oscar.”

He admitted that he “cried like a baby” when Frémaux informed him about Cannes’ acceptance of his directorial debut after initially assuming it would not find a place at the festival.

Propeller One-Way Night Coach, which features Clark Shotwell as the lead child character, Jeff, is based on his 1997 children’s novel of the same name about a young boy and his mother going on a cross-country flight to Hollywood.

Travolta wrote it for his son Jett, according to a New York Magazine report at the time. Jett later passed away in 2009 at the age of 16 while on a Christmas vacation in The Bahamas.

The eldest of John Travolta and his wife, actress Kelly Preston’s three kids, Jett, reportedly had a vascular condition called Kawasaki disease since age 2. His 2009 demise was attributed to a seizure, which was a common symptom he experienced due to his ailment.

Following the tragedy, Travolta and Preston accused an ambulance driver, Tarino Lightbourne, and a politician, Pleasant Bridgewater, of demanding $25 million in return for not releasing confidential information about Jett’s demise to the public.

Travolta testified in the trial in 2009. Next year, another Bahamian politician publicly revealed that one of the suspects had been acquitted, resulting in a mistrial, according to a 2010 report by The Telegraph.

Before a second trial could start, prosecutor Neil Braithwaite announced that the family wanted to drop the matter.

“The long-pending status of this matter continued to take a heavy emotional toll on my family, causing us to conclude that it was finally time to put this matter behind us,” Travolta said in a September 2010 statement. “Therefore, after much reflection, I concluded that it was in my family’s best interest for me not to voluntarily return to the Bahamas to testify a second time at trial.

Earlier that year, Travolta had admitted that his lifelong faith in Scientology helped him heal from the tragedy. He later created the Jett Travolta Foundation, a nonprofit organization to help children with special needs, in memory of his late son.