When making a movie, that achingly slow enterprise, John Travolta soaks up the endless pauses by dining on his own personalised catering. Every day lavish dishes are carefully prepared to his own specifications, while the other actors look on in envy.

“He’s got every little gourmet luxury going on,” laughs his most memorable female co-star, Uma Thurman. “He stops at nothing.”

While this may simply seem another testament to the far reaches of star power, it also says a great deal about Travolta. He’s got things sorted. The good life is his for the taking. As he saunters into the LA hotel room in which we are doing the interview, he’s virtually gliding, a smile cutting across cheeks that have plumped attractively with age. He’s so damn cool. Effortless is the word. That divide between him and his onscreen persona, lately populated with a ream of silky, magnificent characters as chilled as a gazpacho, is all but invisible. Indeed, he’s here to promote Get Shorty’s Chili Palmer, the perfect distillation of the Travolta vibe, returning in a sequel, naturally entitled Be Cool.

But no. “I wish I was Chili,” says Travolta. Yeah, right: it’s a prerequisite for anyone who holds himself as well as this 51-year-old superstar does that he will claim he’s dead normal at heart.

“Who is as cool as Chili Palmer?” he continues. “It’s like saying, ‘Who is as cool as James Bond?’ I mean, nobody is that cool. These are designed scenes and set-ups for someone to be ultra cool. I don’t think I’ve ever been like that.”

Au contraire. Modern American conceptions of machismo at its most controlled and alluring have been shaped by such characters as Tony Manero from Saturday Night Fever, Danny Zuko from Grease, Bud Davis from Urban Cowboy and, of course, the verbose hitman Vincent Vega from Pulp Fiction. And today, just witnessing him slip and slide over questions, he seems nothing but a man who is in total control.

“Sometimes a sign of being cool is someone who is comfortable with himself and considers and is aware,” says Vince Vaughn, a co-star in Be Cool. “I remember the first time I worked with John I was very intimidated, but he made it, well, cool.”

The new film, set ten years after Get Shorty, switches the redoubtable Chili from the movie biz into the crime-afflicted regions of the music biz. It’s an ensemble comedy-thriller flitting about a lazy LA with an all-star cast also including Thurman, Harvey Keitel, The Rock, Cedric the Entertainer (“from a long line of Entertainers!") and Outkast’s effusive singer André 3000. Importantly, for Travolta, it’s not a direct sequel and is, as with Get Shorty, based on a novel by Elmore Leonard.

“I am not a sequel person; I don’t respond to sequels at all,” he says. “I think the lure for all of us was that Elmore wrote the book and there was this kind of thoroughbred thing. The idea that there was this book that was a bestseller that happened to be a sequel to the original was all part of the allure.”

His place in the stratosphere now fixed, even if his box-office clout continues to waver (he hasn’t had a bona fide hit since The General’s Daughter in 1999), you get the sense that what Travolta seeks most from his chosen profession is old-fashioned enjoyment. Be Cool was a chance to check in with a favourite character and to have a riot on set. “Actors can get very complicated with each other,” he sighs. “Not this group. I think we’re different, we’re upfront. I had fun. That is what it’s all about.”

All of which seems to contradict that other aspect of Travolta’s life away from the private jets, jet pilot’s licence and glowing reputation as the easiest-going superstar in the industry: the Scientology. Unlike Tom Cruise, who seems determined to make a stand against those who would mock his belief in Scientology, Travolta sidesteps it.

“I guess I have almost always been a positive person, but my studies in Scientology have made me even more positive,” is about as much evangelism as he goes in for.

Maybe his reticence is due to the crushing failure of his pet project, Battlefield Earth, based on the science-fiction caper written by the founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard. Released in 2000, it nearly derailed his career for a second time. (Travolta spent the 1980s wrestling with serious career implosion before being resuscitated by Quentin Tarantino casting him in Pulp Fiction.)

Talking of which, it seems that as a result of Pulp Fiction it is a Hollywood given that if you have Thurman and Travolta they will hit the dance floor at some point. Sure enough, Be Cool has its stars spinning round the dance floor in a direct reference to those silky moves in Jack Rabbit Slim’s.

But to different effect, Travolta says. “In Pulp Fiction we played characters who were hellbent on death. We were high all the time, I was killing people and she, was, who knows, at any moment she could go too. These guys in this movie are hellbent on life.”

Thurman, like most others who have worked with him, goes slightly gaga at the mention of Travolta: “It is so much fun to have relationships that continue and you get to check back in and you both are different,” she says. “We have a great affinity — and obviously we had a lucky turn together in the past.”

There is the air of the sage about Travolta in his maturity. Alongside his Zen-like approach to life and work he seems to know better. He’s been married to the actress Kelly Preston for 13 years, with nary a ripple to disturb their relationship. “There are folk in Hollywood who get addicted to suffering and pain and almost enjoy being sad,” he says. “I’m not one of those.”

As time is called and he leaves, Travolta pauses to talk about the hotel we’re in. He has chosen it himself as the place to launch the film, an airy, well-appointed building indistinguishable from a hundred others. He like its ambience. “The rooms are airier,” he says. “It means you can stay cool.”

Be Cool is released in Britain on April 1

Explore Film

• Film Reviews

• Trailers

• DVD

• Oscars

• Cannes

Editor's choice

• U2 at Nou Camp Stadium, Barcelona
• The 50 Best Movie Villains
• The 15 golden rules of theatre etiquette