1995 The Entertainers

Look at him. No, look at him. That icy stare John Travolta taught Danny DeVito in Get Shorty wasn't merely the year's most memorable piece of eye contact—it was the power glower of a genuine superstar.

Last year, Travolta, 41, revived his near-comatose career with an Oscar-nominated turn in Pulp Fiction, but this year he did something even more impressive: He made the comeback stick. Get Shorty, his first post-Pulp flick, was one of the year's biggest hits, earning $66 million (so far) as well as some of the most glowing reviews of Travolta's career. As gangster-gone-Hollywood Chili Palmer, he proved he could play smart every bit as winningly as he once played dumb. He was charming, even when tossing a thug down a spiral staircase. He was adorable, especially when sitting in a movie theater reciting dialogue from Touch of Evil. When he said, ''Look at me,'' you looked at him. ''It kind of played itself,'' Travolta says. ''It was very well thought out. I just had to go with the qualities of the character — the certainty and confidence — and be true to the words. That was my job. And I felt like I did my job right with that one.''

The bonus for a job done right: Travolta now enters Hollywood's highest income bracket. After pocketing a mere $150,000 for his resurrection in Pulp, he reportedly earned $3.5 million for Get Shorty. His fee for John Woo's loose-nuke thriller, Broken Arrow, due in February, was a reported $7 million, and he's said to be getting another $8 million for playing a gas station attendant-turned-genius in Disney's Phenomenon (which wraps this month). Next he'll be banking a reported $10 million for slipping into angel's wings in Nora Ephron's afterlife odyssey, Michael, which begins filming in February, and a reported $16 million-plus for Roman Polanski's The Double, in which he'll do double duty as a man and his own doppelganger. His current asking price: an unheard-of $21 million a picture.

''But I did White Man's Burden for nothing,'' he says, pointing to his last release, the high-concept (and low-box office) race relations drama from Pulp's producer. ''Some pieces, you need to take the risk with the producers. It depends on the type of movie, the concept, the budget, the genre.''

It's a measure of how far Travolta's star has re-risen that he actually has the luxury of taking risks. As little as two years ago, he was sharing screen time with talking dogs at the tail end of his last comeback, the Look Who's Talking series. ''Even at my hottest point, I don't think I'd been offered more than three or four scripts a year, sometimes one a year,'' he says. ''Now I don't have the time to read the amount of scripts that are coming in. I am totally, fully aware of how unusual and how full-bodied this experience is in terms of opportunity.''

Does he ever look over his shoulder, worrying that his latest comeback might disappear? ''I have to be honest with you,'' he answers. ''If I dared look over my shoulder, I couldn't do what I needed to get done. I'm so busy.''