Travolta almost turned down Hairspray role

Washington -- Actor John Travolta has revealed that he would not have agreed to play overweight mother Edna Turnblad in his new movie Hairspray if he had not been persuaded by director Adam Shankman‘s passion for the film.

The actor was afraid that Hairspray, which is an adaptation of the Tony-Award winning 2002 Broadway musical of the same name, would not be as successful as ‘Grease‘, a 1978 adaptation of another musical.

However, he put his doubts aside after realising the cast‘s commitment to the film.

"(Shankman) basically said to me, ‘I take this movie personally and if it doesn‘t come out right, I‘m going to die.‘ And I said, ‘Whoa, I‘ve got to go with that guy‘, because musicals don‘t work unless every throttle‘s on full, so when I got the sense everybody cares, then I said OK..." Contactmusic quoted Travolta as saying.

"I‘d already had the biggest musical in history with Grease and I wanted to leave it at that. So, excuse the pun, but it took a lot of grease to get me back in the frying pan," he added. (ANI)