Entertainment

Photo: The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

US actor John Travolta, right and Puerto Rican actor Benicio Del Toro with US director Oliver Stone, centre, during the photo call for 'Savages', at a central London hotel, Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2012. (AP Photo/Joel Ryan)

John Travolta says privacy laws should shield celebrities from the kind of exposure suffered by Kate Middleton.

Gossip magazines have published topless pictures of Prince William's wife taken during a private holiday.

Travolta, who has faced unwelcome scrutiny of his own private life, told the BBC that it is the "worst time to be famous."

"There is a right to privacy whether you're famous or not famous, and I feel that anyone being invaded at that level is unfortunate and there should be a law, no one would like that," he said in an interview broadcast Friday.

Travolta plays a corrupt cop in Oliver Stone's drug-war film "Savages," which opens in Britain on Friday.

It's his first film since 2010. Recently he has been in the headlines for his private life, including a discredited, but widely reported, lawsuit claiming he had groped two masseurs.

Travolta, who has been one of Hollywood's best-known faces since he starred in "Saturday Night Fever" in 1977, said he almost retired from acting after the death of his 16-year-old son Jett in 2009.

He said that after his son's death from a seizure he'd "thought of retiring at one point because it felt like too much."

But he told the BBC that "after three years getting a lot of support from my church and a lot of support from people, fans, family I decided that it was OK to go back to work."

Travolta is a prominent member of the Church of Scientology.