Photo: Everett Collection
John Travolta is mourning the passing of his co-star and close friend Kirstie Alley, who died following a battle with cancer. She was 71. After Alley’s children confirmed the sad news of her death on social media yesterday (Dec. 5), an outpouring of tributes from Hollywood soon followed, including a heartfelt post from Travolta, who remembered the “special” actress who starred alongside him in three Look Who’s Talking films.
Travolta posted two photos of Alley to Instagram yesterday, the first of which features the actress posing in a white dress with a string of pearls wrapped around her arm as she stares into the camera. The second image shows Alley and Travolta grinning at one another as she drapes her arm over his shoulder.
“Kirstie was one of the most special relationships I’ve ever had,” Travolta wrote in the caption of his post. “I love you Kirstie. I know we will see each other again.”
Travolta also shared a clip from Look Who’s Talking Now to his Instagram Story. In the brief video, he and Alley dance along to an orchestra in a dreamy scene that ends with a kiss.
Alley and Travolta starred in three Look Who’s Talking films in total, beginning with Look Who’s Talking in 1989, followed by Look Who’s Talking Too (1990) and Look Who’s Talking Now (1993). The first film stars Alley as single mother Mollie, who hops into a cab while going into labor only to fall in love with her driver, James (Travolta), and raise her baby with him.
Alley said she developed a strong and lasting relationship with Travolta while working on the film franchise, but told Howard Stern in 2013 that the two kept things platonic because they were married to other people at the time — her to ex-husband Parker Stevenson, and him to the late Kelly Preston.
“It took me years to not look at John as a romantic interest,” she said, per People, before telling Stern that Travolta was “the greatest love of my life.”
In a separate interview on a 2018 episode of Dan Wooten’s podcast, Alley said she and Travolta were “fun and funny together” and admitted, “I actually let myself fall in love with him and stay in love with him for a long time,” per People.
Still, Alley said a romantic relationship between the two of them would have been passionate, but brief, explaining, “John and I would have devoured each other because John and I are so alike. It would be like two blazing stars that just fizzled out.”
