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John Travolta selling $5m oceanic mansion he shared with late wife Kelly Preston
John Travolta, the 67-year-old star of Grease and Saturday Night Fever recently listed the home on Islesboro, that he shared with late wife, actor Kelly Preston for $5 million.
The Maine mansion that actor John Travolta shared with his late wife, actor Kelly Preston, has been put up for sale. The 67-year-old star of Grease and Saturday Night Fever recently listed the home on Islesboro, an island off the coast of Maine, for $5 million, according to the Portland Press Herald.
The couple bought the home in 1991 as newlyweds and turned it from a “very dark and somber” house into a bright family home for their soon-to-be-born son, Jett, according to a 1999 feature in Architectural Digest. Built in 1903, the 10,830-square-foot home has 20 bedrooms and sits on a 48-acre estate along the ocean.
Preston had told that the mansion was "almost spooky" when the couple first bought it. She said to AD, "John and I came in and redid everything—carpets, furniture—in cream and eggshell. If you need to do it quickly, go white."
In the same interview Travolta added, "It was wild. You could see the potential of the house—in terms of the quality of the wood and craftsmanship, it's built like a yacht—but there was so much to do. The first month we had to install a hotel-size furnace system and have the kitchen redone."
Travolta told Architectural Digest that he and Preston bought the home after visiting actor Kirstie Alley at her home on the island, and how renovating the house taught him new things about his then new wife. The couple said they had always wanted a home big enough to entertain their dozens of family members.
Preston, who had roles alongside Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire and Arnold Schwarzenegger in Twins, was married to Travolta for 29 years and died last year after a two-year battle with breast cancer. She was 57. Their first son, Jett, died in 2009 after suffering a seizure at the family's vacation home in the Bahamas.
Travolta also spoke of how the whole process of doing up the house was exciting, saying, "The exciting thing was Kelly had more of an interest in decorating and design than I knew, and I liked that. Although I would've been fine, too, with someone having less [interest] so I could dominate."
According to People, he went on with a laugh, saying, "But I couldn't, so we had to negotiate. Creatively, I was only used to dealing with her as an actor, because we met when we were making The Experts in 1987. I knew how she worked as an actress but not in other artistic areas."
Travolta became a Hollywood star in the 1970s and was nominated for an acting Oscar for his 1977 performance in Saturday Night Fever. He was nominated again for his role in 1994's Pulp Fiction.
(With AP inputs)
