Billionaire mogul Barry Diller claims John Travolta rejected iconic role due to film's ‘gay subtext'

Daily Mail​

23-05-2025

A Hollywood mogul has claimed John Travolta rejected an iconic role due to the movie's 'gay subtext'.
Barry Diller, who published tell-all memoir Who Knew this week, alleged Travolta, 71, was set to take the leading role in 1980's American Gigolo, about a male escort who gets framed for the murder of an ex-client, but was replaced by Richard Gere, 75, after he exited the movie.
Diller, 83 – who was the CEO of Paramount at the time, writes in the book that Travolta told then-Paramount Pictures president Michael Eisner that he was pulling out due to his grief over the death of his mother and girlfriend Diana Hyland.
Per THR, Diller writes: 'He slumped down in a chair in Michael's office, started to cry and said, "I can't do American Gigolo. I'm too sad. I'm still in mourning. It's the wrong thing for me to do. You have to let me out of it."'
'Michael came down to my office and said, "John's just left, and we have to let him out of the movie because he just can't do it." I said, "He's faking it and using you. It's too late to recast and he's perfect for it.''
Diller says he 'was certain [Travolta] had acted his way through his meeting with Michael' and 'no longer wanted to do Gigolo. He was afraid of playing that character because of its somewhat gay subtext. For days, I said, "I'm not even going to hear of letting him out of the movie, full stop, period.'
Diller says he then sat down with Travolta and tried to persuade him not to 'screw up' his career but listening to his 'twerpy, inexperienced manager.'
He wrote: 'This is a critical time for you, and when you've got a great script and a great part, you don't let anything put you off it.' I went on with various examples of how his management had been mishandling things since his spurt to superstardom.'
'He left with a pained and hurt look. A day or two later it became clear that he was not going to show up for the first day of shooting and would take whatever consequences ensued. I had made the situation worse because he'd told his manager about my criticism of him, so they both hated me.'
Diller added that 'Gigolo made Gere a star' and claimed the Pretty Woman actor briefly broke up his romance with Diane von Furstenberg - who Gere had a fling with in the 1980s.
Diller went onto wed Von Furstenberg in 2001 but has now came out as gay in his memoir.
American Gigolo director Paul Schrader also claimed the 'gay subtext' of the film led to Travolta's drop-out, telling THR 'three things' led Travolta to exit: the passing of his mother, 'his first mega-flop, a film called Moment by Moment' and 'he had growing anxiety about the gay subtext [of the film].'
DailyMail.com has contacted representatives for John Travolta for comment.
Travolta lost his first love Hyland, to breast cancer in 1977, when he was 23 and she was 41, ten years before he met his wife Kelly Preston, who died from the same disease in 2020.
Travolta and Hyland met while working on the movie The Boy in the Plastic Bubble in which Hyland played Travolta's mother.
The film was released in 1976, a year before Diana died in Travolta's arms.
In an interview with People three months after she died, he said: 'I have never been more in love with anyone in my life. I thought I was in love before, but I wasn't.
'From the moment I met her I was attracted. We were like two maniacs talking all the time on the set of Bubble.
'After a month it became romantic.
The pair spent weekends traveling and spending time with Diana's four-year-old son from a previous marriage.
'I had more fun with Diana than I ever had in my life.
'And the odd thing is just before we met I thought I would never have a successful relationship.
'She told me that she too had thought the same thing. Then, bam,' he said.
She'd already had a mastectomy two years before they met, and was confident her cancer would not return.
When she got her second diagnosis, Travolta was filming Saturday Night Fever in New York.
He flew back to be with her. She died aged 41 two weeks after finding out the cancer had returned.
He married Preston in 1991 and the couple welcomed three children, including son Jett, who died aged 16 in 2009.