Predominant Digest

Disabled actor Rikki Lee Travolta has been introduced as a Finest Actor nominee within the Midwest Movie Competition’s Better of the Midwest Awards for his starring efficiency within the movie The Sleight from 54 Scripts Productions.

Directed by Ben Kurstin and co-starring Amy Stricker, Isabel Fugatt, and Freda Hu, The Sleight is a thriller with darkish comedy undertones a couple of small-time magician (Travolta) who’s mistaken to be the reincarnated chief of a polygamous cult.

Travolta was identified with psychological sickness in 2008. His diagnoses embrace bipolar dysfunction, paranoid schizophrenia, dissociative id dysfunction, nervousness dysfunction, medical despair, and borderline persona dysfunction.

Previous to being identified, Travolta entered the leisure business at a younger age, showing as Tiny Tim in a regional CBS broadcast of A Christmas Carol. He first made nationwide headlines as a younger grownup when he was dropped at Chicago in a stunt casting maneuver to revive ticket gross sales for town’s most well-known environmental comedy Tony n’ Tina’s Marriage ceremony.

The celeb casting ploy was successful, with ticket gross sales exploding when Travolta joined the solid. Fox Factor within the Morning host Marianne Murciano raved;

“I’ve seen the present earlier than. With Rikki Lee Travolta the present is even higher!”

The Midwest Movie Competition award nomination comes as part of a profession rebirth for the actor. After being identified and beginning remedy in 2008, Travolta was unable to proceed his performing profession. Nonetheless, in 2016 he made a triumphant return starring in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Since then, he has appeared in choose movie and tv tasks, with the motto: “We won’t assist being disabled. However we are able to present what disabled folks can nonetheless accomplish.”

“I do not do as many appearing tasks as I as soon as did,” says Travolta. “Since changing into disabled, doing any form of appearing undertaking requires all the celebrities to be in alignment. And, to be trustworthy, there’s a sure stigma at play that makes some filmmakers hesitate to make use of disabled expertise.”

“Whereas I’m really honored on a private stage for being nominated as greatest actor, what really makes my coronary heart soar is {that a} disabled actor is being acknowledged. It simply occurs to be me,” provides Travolta. “We dwell in a altering world, one the place variations are beginning to be celebrated as a substitute of hidden.”

In 2015, Ali Stroker turned the primary actor to make use of a wheelchair to seem on a Broadway stage. A number of years in the past in 2019, she turned the primary particular person with a incapacity to be nominated and obtain the Tony Award for Finest Featured Actress in a Musical.

Troy Kotsur gained the Academy Award for Finest Supporting Actor in 2022 for his function in Finest Image winner CODA. Troy is simply the second deaf actor to win an Academy Award.

“There’s nonetheless ample discrimination, and there probably shall be for the foreseeable future. However we’re making strides – large strides. And my hope is as an business we’ll proceed to take action,” concludes Travolta.

Now making his residence within the Better Chicago space, Travolta additionally hosts the weekly radio present and podcast It is Showtime with Rikki Lee, ranked as one of many world’s high leisure information broadcasts on Apple Podcasts. The half-hour interview program options friends starting from Hollywood A-Listing expertise to platinum-selling recording artists to up-and-comers on the lookout for their first break.

The Midwest Movie Competition Better of the Midwest Awards ceremony takes place Thursday, November 2, 2023, at CineCity Chicago.