At 51, Olivia is still getting physical
Her statement was brief but stunning. On July 14, 1992, Olivia Newton-John told a news conference that she had been stricken with breast cancer. For anyone acquainted with Newton-John’s story and her vegetarian lifestyle, her cancer ordeal was just the latest in a series of personal tragedies and misfortunes that had plagued her in a career marked by giddying ups and downs.
Olivia Newton-John was born on September 26, 1948 in Cambridge, England, but raised in Australia. Her mother was daughter of the Nobel winning physicist Max Born and her father was a language professor at Cambridge and Melbourne. Despite her family’s academic background, Newton- John showed an interest in singing even at an early age, launching her career as a teenage performer in England.
Though well entrenched in pop stardom in the mid-seventies, it was her role opposite young John Travolta in 1978 that brought her pop idol status. The movie version of the Broadway hit Grease in 1978 was a runaway hit and continues to have a devoted following to this day.
Newton-John went on to earn numerous gold records and seized many awards, including the Grammy. However, Newton-John was about to experience the rollercoaster of stardom. Her next film, Xanadu in 1980 was a disappointing box-office flop, though the film’s soundtrack did provide her with another hit song.
She bounced back in 1981 when the release of her biggest hit album Physical. The title track scored No 1 on the US charts for weeks. But then her next film Two Of a Kind, again with Travolta, failed at the box office.
In 1983, Newton-John returned to Australia because she was being stalked by a man. Following his arrest, she flew back to Hollywood and opened Koala Blue, a chain of clothing stores, Koala Blue went bankrupt by the end of 1991, sparking a series of events that would prove disastrous for Newton-John both personally and professionally.
She was preparing to jump-start her music career in 1992 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Two weeks before her own diagnosis, her father had died of cancer. Newton-John underwent a partial mastectomy and breast reconstruction. Her, husband, Matt Lattanzi, was at her side when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, but they eventually split in 1995 and divorced the following year.
As Olivia Newton-John enters her senior years, her health regimen is also beginning to capture media attention
The cancer turned out to be a “special gift” for Newton-John, taking her on a journey of self-discovery. Once, she feared “growing old, performing, dying you name it.” Now she makes herself do the things that scare her.
As in the case of any major performer facing a life-threatening illness, Newton-John’s accomplishments were again in the spotlight. She returned to film in 1996, making a cameo appearance in the AIDS melodrama It’s My Party. Her movie Grease also enjoyed a successful theatrical re-release in 19998. Around October this year, Newton-John’s newest film, Sordid Lives, an adaptation of the stage play of the same title, will get a selective release in several theaters.
At 51, Newton-John still sports her trademark short cropped hair, minus the headband. She’s still as youthful as Sandy, the character she played in Grease. And she still radiates with an energy that inspires, many of her colleagues in Hollywood.
But as Olivia Newton-John enters her senior years, her health regimen is also beginning to capture media attention. Now whenever Olivia’s name crops up, so does the speculation that she’s had a facelift or takes the seaweed extract imedeen. It’s “no” on both counts. It’s more luck, in that Newton-John has “A youthful-looking mother so good genes” and the fact that she looks after herself “without being self-obsessed.”
She doesn’t smoke, eats only a little meat and prefers organically-grown foods. She meditates daily, drinks a lot of water, walks or runs on the beach and works out a local gym. “If I want to feel good, I need to do some exercise every day,” she says.
Olivia Newton-John, indeed knows how to get Physical. And just like the Grease slogan, she is still the word.
By Roni Toldanes
Editor's note - at 51 should you really be classified as senior?