Susan George pays tribute to Olivia

thanks to Kay

FOR nearly six decades they were the closest friends.

Whatever life threw at them, the friendship between Susan George and Olivia Newton-John endured right until the very end, with Olivia’s death this week aged 73.

From the swinging 60s to the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, both women grew up in the full glare of the showbiz spotlight. But it was also away from the cameras that the actresses cemented their lifelong bond, with the pair most at ease among nature, and in the company of their joint love, horses.

Here, in an emotional tribute to her lifelong friend, Susan recalls the laughs, loves and heartaches that marked their extraordinary friendship.

At the Grease premiere in London our limo was mobbed.. she was staggered

WHAT can I say about my beloved friend who filled my heart and head with pride?

We met as teenagers and throughout the years shared so much of life, love and laughter.

When her incredible talent and songbird voice was little known to the masses and I was promoting a movie in California, we both had few pennies and I snuck her into my ABC studios-paid-for suite at the Beverley Wilshire Hotel, for what was the most fabulous girls about town Hollywood week.

When [producer] Allan Carr offered her Grease, she didn’t at first think she was right for the role, but everyone knows there would never have been a better Sandy, the one and only, revered over the world.

I was with her through the making, and at the premiere in London and when our stretch limo was mobbed, she was staggered and playfully humbled by all the amazing attention.

Did she ever know how beautiful she was? No, never, and that was part of her magic.

Her first home was in Big Rock in the California hills where I kept my horse, and we would ride out for hours on end.

She did the out there, starry stuff: premieres, meetings, lunches, while smiling all the while, which she loved. Equally, the simplest of things and her true self really was the girl next door.

She came to my stud farm, Georgian Arabians, many times, and, surrounded by horses, she called it her sanctuary. She fell in love with one of my home-bred stallions SG Imagine, and was in awe of his prancing and dancing at the end of the lead.

She always feared for my safety but knew I was confident in my Arabian world and she delighted in watching me work and play with them all.

A few years ago, at her ranch in California she asked me to train Winnie and Harry, her Shetlands, so she could watch and learn. I will never forget that day as I tried to control these two out-of-control ponies running rings around me and how she raucously laughed at my antics and filmed it all. I still have that precious video. It will always bring the memory of times together and, above all, the laughter.

Although we lived on different sides of the world, we were always there for one other. Through good times and bad, and when my beloved husband died of cancer in 2010, she sent a ticket with a date and time to fly to Los Angeles and be with her.

When she was first diagnosed with breast cancer, she rang me in England and typically there was a sort of acceptance, almost as if she knew how she could use it as a platform to help others, with no seed of doubt that she would survive.

And she did, for more than 25 years, before it returned in the most unthinkable and painful way.

Through it all she never complained, though, just got on with living… surviving as she called it.

In our many phone calls, she said we were both warriors – never to be beaten, you and I, Suze. So, in one way, it was still an incredible shock after all the roads back, her strength of spirit leading the way, when things of late took a turn for the worst.

We spoke a few weeks ago and had the longest talk about times past and present, and we laughed a lot. I worried that it might have been too tiring, but she insisted not.

She seemed to have things she wanted to get out and share and I will always treasure what was devastatingly to be our last conversation. My memory is of a talented, loving, giving, generously spirited, funny, brave and beautiful woman, the like of no other, who put everyone before herself. Who beyond words adored her daughter Chloe and who at last found true love with her husband John.

I just feel privileged to have known her as a friend, loved her and been a part of it all. Her light for one tiny moment may have been dimmed but it is now shining somewhere brighter than ever.