Newton-John has known pain and joy
She was John Travolta’s adorable, true, high-school love Sandy Olsson in the movie musical Grase. And today, Australian songbird Olivia Newton-John, at 56, is still warbling but making fewer movies. And not missing it.
The British-born entertainer has homes in Australia where she lived as a child and Malibu Beach, California, where she reared her now 19-year-old daughter, Chloe.
Every so often, she pops up on screen mostly television. Australians saw her sing at the Australian Open tennis tournament earlier this year. And three years ago, she starred opposite her daughter Chloe in The Wilde Girls, a story about an over-the-hill singer who tries to prevent her daughter from following in her mother’s footsteps. She did the film for her pal, director Del Shore, after starring for him in the very funny Sordid Lives.
With her clean-cut, girl-next-door look, Newton-John first hit it big singing country and pop in the seventies and then made a success ful transition to the big screen opposite Travolta, who since Grease has remained a close friend.
One of her biggest hit songs was Physical, a tune that recently received new exposure in the box-office hit Meet the Fockers.
In 1992, she battled breast cancer, had surgery and has bounced back in the music world and become a leading spokesperson for the illness. She likes to spend her time on a huge ranch she owns in Australia.
“I have grown with pain and joy in my life,” she told me recently. “I’ve had wonderful ups and some difficult downs. And it makes you grow.” Looking back on her career she said: “I was very fortunate and I’m aware of it. So I appreciate life.”
Divorced from daughter Chloe’s father, actor Matt Lattanzi, she has remained single and says: “I’m happy within myself.”
A devout environmentalist, she says she’d love to have worked with animals if she didn’t hit it big in singing.
It’s an ability that, it seems, is in the family genes her daughter Chloe has a good voice. Although Mom starred with daughter in The Wilde Girls, Olivia insists, “I’m not a stage mom. I am not pushing her.”
Photo caption:
Newton-John and Travolta, long-time friends since the debut of Grease in 1978, reunited at the premiere of the DVD release of Grease in Los Angeles in September, 2002.