John Travolta Plays It Slick

In his new film, A Civil Action, John Travolta stars in a true story about a slick, self-assured attorney who takes on two corporate giants accused of poisoning a city's drinking water. In the process, he learns about true justice.

CBS This Morning Co-Anchor Mark McEwen asked Travolta why he is often hired to make potentially unwatchable characters watchable.

"I would be guessing at this," says the actor, "but I think it's no different than when possibly they would hire [James] Cagney to play a gangster...or Humphrey Bogart to play a dark character. You have to have an innate lightness to balance out the darkness in a character."

Actually, when he first made it big, Travolta became friends with Cagney and other veteran stars, including Barbara Stanwyck, Gene Kelly, and Cary Grant. "They kind of liked me even more than my own peer group did," he explains. "So I ended up having a lot of dinners at Chasen's with these types of people who thrilled me to no end, because I grew up watching them in movies, and they were my idols, in a way."

Travolta says he's also friendly with the reclusive Marlon Brando.

In A Civil Action, Travolta plays a lawyer, and he says it's not that great a stretch for an actor to play an attorney.

"I've been involved with lawyers for 23 years, and they're all a version of actor to me," says Travolta. "I've seen good ones, not-so-good ones, showy ones, more introverted ones. There's a myriad of types of lawyers, and I think I've met them all."

Robert Duvall is among his costars in the movie, and Travolta says he enjoyed acting with him.

"It's so effortless with Duvall," he explains. "We have a similar acting approach, and we trust ourselves, and we trust each otherÂ… And it's a lot of fun to be with Bobby."

Travolta, 44, who shot to movie stardom in the very physical role of Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever (1974), says he likes to use a lot of body language to define the characters he plays, as in the movies Face/Off (1997), in which he was required to take on the characteristics of costar Nicolas Cage, and Primary Colors (1998), in which he played a politician largely based on President Clinton.

"I like that a character has a very distinct walk, a speech pattern, cadence, accent, like in Primary Colors," Travolta explains. "His whole sense of walking into the room and owning that space, not being at all self-conscious of who he was, when he was, and how he was. That was the key to making him watchable.

"With the A Civil Action character," Travolta continues, "it was more his showiness, the actor-lawyer kind of thing."

Among Travolta's upcoming projects is the film adaptation of The Shipping News, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by E. Annie Proulx, which will costar Travolta's actress wife, Kelly Preston. He'll also star i The General's Daughter and in Battlefield Earth, based on a novel by L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the Church of Scientology.

Travolta also says that he has another project in the works that will afford him to opportunity to sing onscreen again, as he did in the movie Grease (1978).

His other film credits include Michael (1996), Get Shorty (1995), Pulp Fiction (1994), Look Who's Talking (1989), Perfect (1985), Urban Cowboy (1980), and Carrie (1976).