Badham worked in television for years, before his breakthrough in 1977 with Saturday Night Fever, a massive worldwide hit starring John Travolta. WarGames (1983), starring Matthew Broderick, is his other signature film, renowned for its take on popular Cold War fears of nuclear terror, and holocaust, as well as being one of the first films to deal with the subculture of amateur hacking.
Badham's former wife is veteran model Jan Speck of The New Treasure Hunt fame. She has had assorted cameo roles in many of his projects, starting in the 1980s.
John Badham was born in Luton, Bedfordshire, United Kingdom, the son of U.S. Army General Henry Lee Badham, Jr., and English-born Actress Mary Iola Badham (née Hewitt). Badham's father, a native of Birmingham, Alabama, moved his family back to the U.S., when Badham was two years old. John's parents and paternal grandparents are buried in Elmwood Cemetery in Birmingham. John's father was an aviator in both World Wars, and was posthumously inducted into the Alabama Aviation Hall of Fame in 2007. After retirement from the U.S. Air Force as a Brigadier General, John's father became a businessman and was involved with the development of the Ensley and Bessemer regions near Birmingham, Alabama. This same line of Business had brought his own father, John's grandfather, into association with Walker Percy, grandfather of Writer Walker Percy.
