John Travolta and Daughter Ella Wish Ben Travolta a Happy 13th Birthday: ‘I Love You!’

John and Ella Travolta are wishing Ben Travolta a happy birthday. The youngest of the Travolta children turned 13 on Nov. 23.

Travolta, 69, posted a sweet video on Instagram set to the Stevie Wonder song “You Are the Sunshine of My Life.” The video features pictures and videos of Ben throughout the years, including with his dog, Peanut.

“I can’t believe my baby boy is now a teenager,” the Saturday Night Fever star wrote. “Ben turns 13 today. I love you my son!”

Ella, 23, also shared her own birthday post on Instagram for her brother, featuring a picture of him when he was younger. “Happy Birthday my sweetest Benjamin, it feels like yesterday you were this young and now you’re 13!! I love you!,” Ella wrote in the post’s caption.

Ben and Ella are Travolta’s children from his marriage to his wife Kelly Preston, who died from breast cancer in 2020. Travolta has previously opened up about his grieving process.

“I learned that mourning someone, living in grief, is very personal,” he told Esquire Mexico in 2021. “Grief is personal and finding your own path is what could lead to healing. It’s different than someone else’s journey.” The couple also had a son, Jett, who died in 2009 at age 16.

Travolta has talked about Ella and Ben’s lives in recent years. Of Ben, he told PEOPLE in 2019, “He’s into gymnastics, tennis, fishing and the computer world, like all the kids.”

When speaking about Ella, Travolta shared, “She is her own person. She is gracious, generous, poised, graceful and gorgeous. I don’t know how she came to be, and I don’t take any credit other than just adoring her. And maybe that’s a valid contribution.”

The father and daughter have a close bond, with Ella following in her father’s footsteps by pursuing acting. She appeared in the 2021 movie Get Lost, as well as 2009’s Old Dogs, which Travolta starred in alongside Robin Williams. Ella released her debut song, “Dizzy,” in 2022.

Travolta is set to star in the upcoming movie musical and romantic comedy That’s Amore!, alongside Katherine Heigl. The film sees the two play an unlikely pair who meet. The film is “a real throwback” to the era of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, according to a Variety interview with director Nick Vallelonga.

“John and Katherine are fantastic together, and during rehearsals they had so much chemistry,” he said.

source: people.com