Olivia I've been lucky with cancer
Olivia Newton-John: I’ve been lucky with cancer. I take medicinal cannabis and I’m doing great By Tom Ough
We asked the actress, 70, what her younger self would make of her life
One of my few regrets is not meeting my grandfather. His name was Max Born, and he was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who left Germany in 1933 to escape Hitler’s persecution of the Jews.
I was born in Cambridge, where my father [Brinley Newton-John, a Bletchley Park code-cracker who was married to Born’s daughter, Irene] was a headmaster; but we moved to Australia when I was five. It was a long way away, although my mother was always saying I must visit my grandfather. I’d gone travelling in Europe when I was 16 or 17, but I was always too busy to do as she said and meet him.
I regret that. If I could meet my younger self I’d tell her not to let these things slip. It’s something I’ve lived by ever since. If I feel the urge to see someone, I try to make it happen, just in case.
The move had a big effect on me. I’ve been moving and travelling my whole life, and it started then. When you’re young and with your family it’s fine, but five years after we moved, when I was 10 years old, my parents got divorced. No kid likes that. Nobody is happy about a divorce. I lived with my mum after that, and because I was away from my dad it wasn’t the most joyful time. If my 10-year-old self could speak to me as I am now, she’d ask: “Will it turn out OK? Is it going to be OK?”. And I’d say: “Absolutely. Absolutely, yeah.”
I’m not sure I’d tell her about having cancer [last year, Newton-John was diagnosed with the disease for a third time]. I didn’t tell my daughter when I had breast cancer, because she was very young and she’d lost her best friend to cancer. If I’d told her I had cancer too, she’d have presumed I was going to die as well.
Maybe I’d tell my younger self that yes, it’s possible that you could get cancer in your life but that doesn’t mean you’ll die of it. I think that’s the important thing to know. People have this preconceived notion that cancer is a death sentence, but you can now live with it like a chronic illness. I’m lucky and I take a lot of medicinal cannabis and I’m doing great.
I think my younger self would just want to know that I’m happy, and fulfilling a purpose. I haven’t been working for a long time, and I’m really enjoying just being – which is a new experience for me. I spend half my time in California and half my time in Australia, and I’m taking care of my animals [two miniature horses and a German shepherd], my hospital [the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness & Research Centre], and my husband [John Easterling, an American businessman and environmentalist].
My younger self would love John, as I do. He’s very warm and takes an interest in people. If he met me as a 10-year-old he would show me the plants he’s growing and teach me stuff in a professorly way. If I met that 10-year-old Olivia, we’d go and spend time with the miniature horses.
That was my favourite thing as a girl – just being with animals. I was always bringing home stray cats and dogs and kittens that people had abandoned, and taking them to the RSPCA. I was very motivated about animals and animal cruelty, and that’s never changed.
And if I showed her Grease, she would love it and have a good laugh. She would have thought that John Travolta was very handsome. When I was really young I wanted to be a mounted policewoman, even though they didn’t have them in those days, but I was lucky that I knew how to sing. I wasn’t interested in being a star, and I’ve always believed that fame is fleeting and that there’ll be someone else taking your place tomorrow, but I’m grateful for the career I’ve had.
Don’t Stop Believin’: A Memoir, by Olivia Newton-John (Simon & Schuster, £20), is out now
Original article