PARIS:

US actor John Travolta said on June 23 that he felt “sexy” in a new role which requires him to spend five hours a day in make-up so he can play a well-upholstered mother. “I did feel sexy,” he told a news conference in Paris about his new film Hairspray.

“The women I liked when I was growing up were Sophia Loren, Anita Ekberg, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor... women with a curvaceous body,” he said.

“If you are going to play a woman, let’s make sure it is a woman you like (...) I like well-built women.”

Travolta plays the part of Edna Turnblad in Hairspray, a musical comedy originally directed by John Waters in 1988.

Remarking that tradition required Edna to be played by a man Travolta said, “I didn’t want to play a drag queen and I had to make sure they agreed with this: let me be an actor and become a woman.”

Hairspray, directed by Adam Shankman, stars Michelle Pfeiffer, Christopher Walken and Amanda Bynes.