Olivia finally takes the plunge - Aussie Citizenship
For the past 25 years, she has been one of our biggest entertainment exports a singing ambassador for Australia, who has flown our flag high in Hollywood and even named her clothing stores after our native koala. And yet, until a few weeks ago, Olivia Newton-John wasn’t even a fair dinkum Aussie.
The British-born beauty had never found the time to officially proclaim her love for her adopted country. But since moving back here to recuperate after surgery and chemotherapy for breast cancer, the need to become an Australian has been foremost on Olivia’s mind, and now she has taken the oath of allegiance to Australia. “I’m so happy about finally becoming an Australian,” she says, clutching her record of citizenship. “I just haven’t been living here long enough in the past to be able to do it. I came here as a child in the early 60s. My mother and father became Australians when they moved here, but I’ve always travelled on a British passport it was easier in the early days. Now it’s important for me to be an Aussie. It was a great feeling, standing in this huge room with just two other people present to listen to me reading the oath. They were lovely to me and gave me a bunch of Australian native flowers, which made me feel really special.”
However, it wasn’t just the star’s decision to become an Australian citizen her eight-year-old daughter, Chloe, had been bugging her for months to speed up the paperwork. “When Chloe heard the news, she was jumping around, just ecstatic,” explains the proud new Aussie. “She is so excited. She wanted to be an Aussie so badly. She loves living in Australia and going to school here. This is her home now.”
Chloe’s happiness has helped Olivia, 45, and husband Matt Lattanzi, 34, make the decision to move to Australia for good. They have put their two luxury mansions in Malibu on the market and over the next few months they will be finalising their business dealings in the US. Their base now is at Byron Bay, on the NSW north coast. “It feels right to be living in Australia now,” she says. “We are so happy here it’s a wonderful country to live in.” The family moved Down Under last year so Matt could star in the Nine Network’s now defunct soapie, Paradise Beach.
Olivia has crammed plenty of work into that short time. Starring in the Nine Network’s Human Nature series as well as Banjo Paterson’s The Man From Snowy River, she has also been working on a new album that will be released later this year. And on September 8 she will feature in a Nine Network special, Ray Martin Presents Olivia Newton-John, with Chloe and Matt. But the pretty singer is especially proud of her new album, which will be titled Gaia (meaning earth). “I have written all the songs myself,” she says. “There’s a song for breast cancer and a song for the whales. It’s a very personal project and at the moment I’m working hard on putting the finishing touches to it in the studio.”
Olivia will also have to find time to study up on her politics because now that she’s a fully fledged Aussie, she’ll be entitled to vote here for the first time. “I’ve always missed out on the opportunity to have my say,” she says. “But all that will change at the next election.”
American-born Matt will have to wait at least another year before he is granted the right to be an Aussie. But he has been signed up by Beyond 2000 Productions to host Mad Matt’s World, a documentary series that will scour the globe looking for the world’s most extraordinary people and the lands in which they live. Matt will drop in to visit the people who inhabit the caves and rugged mountains of the Baja peninsula in Mexico. “We’re going to do a crossing of the Sierra de la Giganta mountain range on mules. It’s a treacherous trip,” says Matt. “I would like the series to take a look at encouraging eco-tourists to the area people who want to see the country in its natural state. It’s such a beautiful place and unless Westerners teach the locals how to look after their habitat, it could be lost forever.”
Matt left Australia recently to undertake a research expedition to Baja and he expects the first episode to be completed by the end of the year. And what about the “mad” element to Matt’s world’? Livvy has the last word: “Matt’s going to just go in there and be himself and, believe me, that’s mad enough!”