FOR TRAVOLTA, IT'S MORE THAN STAYING ALIVE : THIS TIME AROUND, HE'S BUSIER, MORE SELF-ASSURED THAN EVER.

Byline: Mark Caro Chicago Tribune

John Travolta is leading a charmed life. The 42-year-old actor was famous for personal extravagance even when he was churning out flops such as ``The Experts,'' ``Shout'' and ``Chains of Gold.'' Now he's commanding as much as $20 million per movie to work with A-list directors and co-stars while enjoying the resurgent adoration of fans young and old.

And the movies just keep coming: Since last fall, Travolta has starred in ``White Man's Burden,'' ``Get Shorty,'' ``Broken Arrow'' and, coming out Wednesday, ``Phenomenon,'' a dewy-eyed drama in which he plays a small-town car mechanic who's struck by a flash from the skies and becomes brilliant.

This spring, he also completed filming the Nora Ephron comedy ``Michael'' in Chicago, and then he was off to Paris to star in Roman Polanski's ``The Double'' - although he since has bolted from that set in an apparent clash with the director over how his character should be played. (Steve Martin replaced him, although there now are reports that the moviehas other problems.)

``You have to make sure you're making the same movie,'' Travolta told Entertainment Weekly. ``You have to make sure you can do the job you've been paid to do,'' he said, stressing that he was willing to forgo his reported $16 million salary.

Travolta has at least two more projects and maybe a third lined up: ``Face Off,'' an action film helmed by ``Broken Arrow'' director John Woo and co-starring Nicolas Cage, and ``Battlefield Earth,'' a science-fiction adventure he is producing that's based on the novel by Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. And late last week, studio sources announced that Travolta and Dustin Hoffman will make Warner Bros.' ``Mad City'' their next film. Travolta and Hoffman decided to commit to the picture after a four-hour meeting that sources said took place among the actors and director Constantin Costa-Gavras.

He's come a long way from the $140,000 he reportedly received for 1994's ``Pulp Fiction'' and the previous decade when he had to be upstaged by a talking baby to appear in a hit. Yet, he claims, life hasn't changed much.

``I'm living the same as I've always lived,'' Travolta said matter-of-factly, leaning back on a couch in a Chicago luxury hotel after wrapping ``Michael,'' his piercing teal eyes offset by two days' stubble. ``I just feel better living that way.''

Ever since he jumped from TV's ``Welcome Back, Kotter'' to late-'70s movie superstardom in ``Saturday Night Fever'' and ``Grease,'' that way has been to feast on the fruits of his labors. Stories abound of Travolta flying family members and friends all over the world, embarking on spending sprees and stocking up on airplanes and homes (he currently has three of each).

The Englewood, N.J., native probably turned down more big roles in the 1980s (``American Gigolo,'' ``Prince of the City,'' ``Splash'') than he did opportunities to indulge his desires; he passed on ``An Officer and a Gentleman'' because it conflicted with his pilot-training classes. In one early interview, he said, ``There's no one who likes the pleasures of the body more than I do: food, sex, the works.''

That statement still holds true, Travolta says. ``I have to watch what I eat a little more than I used to, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy it as much,'' he says, his body boasting a decadent doughiness since his buff peak of 1983's ``Staying Alive.'' ``I think when you're younger, you're preoccupied with the physical a little more than when you get older. You get more interested in things that are outside your immediate physical pleasures, but it doesn't mean that even if it slows down that you don't enjoy it when you do it.''

Hence, his role in ``Michael'' has a familiar ring to it: He plays an angel who visits Earth and indulges in all manner of physical gratification.

Taking visible joy in living is a thread linking the actor's recent, disparate roles: hit man Vincent Vega's bliss at a heroin hit in ``Pulp Fiction,'' Chili Palmer's cocky amusement in ``Get Shorty,'' Vic Deakins' exuberant madness (``Ain't it cool?'') in ``Broken Arrow,'' George Malley's stop and smell the roses attitude in ``Phenomenon.''

At one point in ``Phenomenon,'' Travolta's character says, ``I think I'm what everyone can be. I'm the possibility.''

Likewise, Travolta is the everyman living out our fantasies. It's a role he's happy to play.

``I'd like to think that I don't waste my life, that I live it to the fullest and that I might represent someone that enjoys it and the possibilities of such,'' he says, adding: ``You have to have enough (money) to survive, but sometimes there's more pleasure in the minimal things than you think.''

That's not to say that the money doesn't come in handy. ``It makes you be able to afford what you've been doing more comfortably,'' he said. ``I support a lot of people, my family, my friends. Some work for me, some don't, and I still take care of them.''

He added that he also gives to charities that promote drug rehabilitation, the rain forest, the cleanup of radioactivity-contaminated food in Russia, cancer and AIDS research and programs for the learning disabled.

``It's hard when you're a celebrity, and you're known for being wealthy, let's say, to exemplify pleasures on the small side,'' he says. ``But the joy my son gives me by smiling or giving me a hug or a kiss is as big a joy as anything that costs.''

His son, with wife Kelly Preston, is 4-year-old Jett, named for dad's hobby. The three of them shuttle between homes in Maine, Florida and Los Angeles. When ``Michael'' was on location in Austin, Texas, each weekend Travolta would get in one of his planes and fly to Los Angeles to be with them.

These moments of togetherness are important because, at least before his premature exit from ``The Double,'' Travolta had scheduled little down time. His current credo would seem to be ``Strike while the iron is hot'' or ``I won't need another comeback if I never go away.''

``I'm taking advantage of the moment,'' he says. ``When I was younger, I might not have taken advantage because I wanted to play more, live my life more; but I'm old enough now to know that it's time to go to work.

``If you're doing parts where if you don't do them, (Jack) Nicholson wants to do them or Anthony Hopkins, that's a big deal. Those are good parts and the best scripts, and why would you not take advantage of that? It may not be there in a couple of years, especially if you keep saying no.''

He views his current professional pinnacle as even higher than the first one. Before, he says, he was ``the best thing'' in most of his movies; now he's co-starring alongside Gene Hackman (``Get Shorty'') or Robert Duvall (``Phenomenon'').

What's more, these Oscar winners conformed themselves to Travolta's loosey-goosey working methods. ``(Duvall and I) just fooled around a lot more than I thought we were going to, which I really loved,'' he says. ``I did that with Gene Hackman, too. I really was thrilled that these credible, solid-state actors were willing to play my kind of approach toward acting, where they're more lighthearted between scenes.''

Another difference between Travolta's second stint with superstardom and the first go-round is the current omnipresence of mass media. Entertainment-celebrity coverage has become all-encompassing, yet strangely enough, Travolta theorizes, it allows him to make more movies without risking overexposure.

He tells of being stopped on the street in January 1990 by a man who asked ``Where have you been?'' - even though he'd seen ``Look Who's Talking'' when it came out the previous October. ``I think the moviegoing audience eats it up like that,'' Travolta says. ``If the last movie I had done was `Pulp Fiction,' I'd be in trouble.''

One facet of his life that Travolta says is remarkably unchanged is the reception he gets from everyday people. ``I'm so thrilled about it,'' he says. ``It's funny, the new generation has responded to me the same way their parents did or their brothers and sisters did.''

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) The Phenom

John Travolta contin ues his remarkable hot streak playing a man instilled with mysterious powers in `Phenomenon'

(2) Although he's on another frenetic career hot streak, John Travolta exudes a stop and smell the roses attitude much like the character he plays in his new movie, ``Phenomenon.''