Los Angeles: John Travolta is almost unrecognisable when he’s first on the screen in the drama ‘A Love Song for Bobby Long’. His hair is white, and his face is drawn and beaten.

Travolta said he worried that if he didn’t look that way, he wouldn’t be believable, “and that’s more frightening to an actor than looking good. And that’s the truth.”

In A Love Song for Bobby Long, Travolta plays a former literature professor whose life has taken an alcohol-fueled nose dive. He sits on the front porch of a dilapidated house outside New Orleans, drunk all day on cheap vodka. Scarlett Johansson also stars in the film.

Travolta, nominated for best-actor Oscars for Pulp Fiction and Saturday Night Fever, said he doesn’t have to live the experiences of his characters to be credible on the screen.

“I was never a heroin addict or a hit man, either, do you know what I mean,” the 50-year-old actor recently told reporters, according to AP Radio. “In Pulp Fiction, I had my obligation there to portray that character; if you’re a mirror of humanity, that’s your job, and I’m doing it.” — AP