Motherhood a year-round role
I wouldn't put myself against any of the wonderful actresses around. I just think I know my capabilities and I do things I'm capable of,
says Olivia Newton-John who has chosen to make her dramatic television debut as the title star of A Mom For Christmas, a Disney night at the movies presentation airing at 8pm Monday on NBC.
It's a natural instinctive choice because Newton-John is a mom, or, as the British born, Australian raised actress finds it easier to say, a mum. Being the mother of 4 year old daughter Chloe is the priority in the life she shares with her actor husband Matt Lattanzi.
But this mature status hasn't put any blemish on her sweetheart good looks. She wears a big sweater and leggings and her blond hair is in a ponytail, as she talks about her latest project in the cosy den of the beautiful Malibu hilltop home she has lived in for 14 years. Able to pass muster as a high-schooler back in 1978, when she starred opposite John Travolta in the movie musical Grease, she now at 42 looks too young to be cast as even thirtysomething. Indeed curled up in one of her rose-patterned chintz chairs she still wouldn't look out of date at a teen slumber party.
The mom she plays in this Christmas special is a department store mannequin that is brought to life to fulfil the wish of a young girl, played by Juliet Sorcey, who has a workaholic father (Doug Sheehan) and no mother.
It's just a really sweet story, a little bit Cinderella and a little bit Mary Poppins,
Newton-John explains. It appealed to me because it's Disney, it's a Christmas movie and, if it's good, it has a chance of turning into a classic. It's cute and the mannequin role was fun to play because she's a little ditsy.
Steve White, the show's executive producer, says he was thrilled that Newton-John decided to do the role because, She has that special something that spark, that energy, whatever you like to call it, which makes for a star. The mannequin has to spring to life out of nothing and then light up the screen and Olivia, with her world-class smile, can do just that. It's not easy to start out playing someone who is really an airhead because she's never been anything but a piece of plaster but then in the course of the story develops the emotions and feelings to become a real person. I was very impressed with how Olivia made that transition.
The movie was shot in October in Cincinnati, where a neighbourhood of Victorian houses and the Lazarus department store, which Newton-John describes as a down-town store with a ding-ding.
met the needs of what White calls evergreen traditional
locations.
Chloe was there throughout the filming and made friends with Sorcey, who is 11 years old. They played Barbies after work,
says Newton-John, revealing Chloe's normal little girl tastes, which find her more interested in watching The Little Mermaid
over and over again than seeing her mother in Grease. Newton-John was pleased to find it was do-able
to have her daughter with her on set, though she says she has no immediate plans to work on another movie. I'm going to play it by ear and see how they like this one first,
she says.
I love Christmas,
Newton-John adds, though I don't like the shopping part. What I like is that everyone gets together and has a great meal and a chat and sits around the fire.
Growing up in Australia, she experienced Christmases that fell in midsummer when It was very hot so we'd take a picnic to the beach and then come home to a big meal at mealtime.
Her family had left England when she was 5, but she returned there as a teenager on a trip and won a prize singing Everything's Coming Up Roses
in a talent contest.
Her mother wanted her to study acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art but instead she homed her natural singing skills, probably inherited from her father who had given up an operatic career to become a college professor, by working in crummy clubs
in swinging 60s London. Her first trip to America in the early 70s was not a success - she was part of a group designed to be the new Monkees in the easily forgotten film Toomorrow. But by the time she moved here in 1974 she was a star, her career - helped by record producer John Farrar, who had married her long time friend and one time singing partner Pat Carroll - well on its way to selling over 50 million records in the next decade.
She won't be singing on camera in A Mom For Christmas, but Farrar has developed two songs for her that will be heard on the soundtrack, a ballad called So Strange
which she describes as A mood piece when the character is kind of overwhelmed by all the feelings she is having and doesn't think she can cope and wants to go back to being just a mannequin,
and an upbeat Christmasy song titled What If.
In partnership with Pat Carroll, Newton-John has become a successful international businesswoman as the Koala Blue clothing boutique they opened in Los Angeles in 1984 has burgeoned into a 55 store worldwide chain.
An interest in clothing may have been as inborn as her singing talent. Recalling one of the few cold Christmases she experienced in England before emigrating to Australia, she says, I remember it was snowing and my mum had bought me this little woollen suit and I remember looking in the mirror and hating it!
Today she oversees all the fashions created for the stores, favoring a practical prettiness, and currently, she says she particularly likes crinkly chiffon skirts, which can be worn for daytime or holiday parties with equal ease.
I Honestly Love You a 1974 number 1 hit, was one of Newton-John's most popular recordings. And the impression she conveys is of straightforward, realistic honesty, proud of her success but in no way overwhelmed by it and only willing to use her talents in projects she genuinely cares about.
Environmental causes are currently very trendy among Hollywood celebrities, but Newton-John's commitment ca be traced to the 1970s when she canceled a tour of Japan to protest the slaughter of dolphins by fishermen. However, she admits that the birth of her daughter has made her more of an outspoken activist in recent years.
Not knowing what might be in the food I was feeding my child got me angry and if you get angry you get vocal,
she says. I only speak really as a concerned mother but I am lucky to have access to the media to say, Look, if we want our kids to survive we are going to have to make certain sacrifices.
So she is a member of the Earth Communications Office, a group of entertainers who try to get environmental messages into the mass media, and she has been named the first Goodwill Ambassador to the United Nations Environment Program. She sang on the Spirit of the Forest record to raise money to save the rainforests and the liner note to Warm and Tender, her 17th album released last year, included tips on protecting the environment. Though she admits she is often as guilty as everyone else of playing along with a consumer-oriented disposable society, she is working to change her habits and, yes, she does have some tips for an environmentally sensitive Christmas.
Send gifts in boxes stuffed with popcorn instead of Styrofoam; keep the wrapping paper and use it again; use your cards for decorations; be creative; try to get back to the way mum used to do it!
She laughs, acknowledging once again the Mom
in herself - year round, lifelong, not just for Christmas.
By Bridget Byrne