Her Untold Stories, Secret Loves, Betrayals, Her Brave Final Days - People

The late icon's friends open up about her rise to stardom land her private world She was so much more than the girl next door

The Late Superstar Was Much More Than Nice - And Stronger Than Fans Ever Knew, A New Book Reveals. By Janine Rubenstein

Throw out a positive cliché, and Olivia Newton-John almost certainly fits the bill: the voice of an angel; a smile that lights up a room, the type to give you the shirt off her back. But by all accounts the real woman was anything but a cliché.

I always thought she got a bit of a bum rap by being labeled 'nice,' her friend, Australian journalist Neil McMahon, says in A Little More Love, Matthew Hild's new biography of the late icon. It was a bit of a shallow word to describe her. There was a real depth and substance and round-ness and genuineness to her, that you sort of walked away thinking, wow! And everyone felt it; it didn't matter who you were.

A Closer Look

She was so versatile, says author Matthew Hild. Part of her success was that she could reinvent herself in a very believable way.

Hild's new book delves deep into the world of Newton-John, who died of breast cancer in 2022 at age 73. Stitching together new and archival interviews with some of her closest friends and colleagues, Hild charts her journey from a painfully shy girl growing up in England and Australia to a beloved entertainer. I witnessed how welcoming her voice was, her longtime accompanist Dane Bryant tells People. Every audience member felt that she was singing just to them.

Newton-John won her earliest fans while touring in the U.K. After her 1973 breakout hit Let Me Be There earned her a Grammy and a Country Music Association Award in 1974, she became a household name in 1978 with the global smash hit release of Grease.

I never saw her angry or shouting. She was a pacifist in that way - Martin Samuel, Hairstylist.

The '50s-set musical romcom made her synonymous with the saccharine-turned-sexy Sandy, and she stayed close with costar John Travolta for the rest of her life. While some say sparks once flew between the pair, Newton-John's more substantial romances read like hit movie scripts of their own: She fell for first husband Matt Lattanzi (with whom she had daughter Chloe, now 40) on a film set; later her boyfriend Patrick McDermott went missing at sea in 2005.

She found lasting love in 2008 when she married John Easterling, who remained stead-fast by her side after she announced in 2017 that her breast cancer that had gone into remission in the early '90s had returned. Her friends say her dogged optimism and altruism throughout that painful ordeal proved the true depth of her character and kindness. She was just an angel of mercy, her longtime hairstylist Martin Samuel tells People. She had so many blessings, but she didn't deserve a lot of the stuff life threw at her.

Below, in excerpts from A Little More Love, friends share stories behind the scenes of her remarkable journey.

She nearly had a romance with John Travolta

In 2018 Didi Conn, who played Frenchy in Grease, told journalist Stephanie Nolasco that she thought that Travolta had been genuinely attracted to Olivia and that the chemistry between the two in the movie was real. Recalling an alternate ending that was filmed for the movie, when Danny and Sandy engaged in a juicy kiss, Conn said. They weren't acting at that moment... it was real, it really was.

More than 20 years after Grease was filmed, a musician who had been married to a Scientologist joined Olivia's band and became friends with her. He says that Olivia and Travolta were very, very close. Almost that close. He also recalls a conversation that he once had with her. Can I ask you a personal question? she said to him. Because you were married to a Scientologist.

Sure, he replied.
Obviously, you know John is a Scientologist.
Oh, yes.
I know the Church of Scientology really reveres him as a very valuable follower, Olivia said. If I had married John, would he have expected me to become a Scientologist?
It would not have been mandatory, but it would have been encouraged, put it that way.
Thank you, Olivia replied. That's all I want to know.

She tried to support friend and fellow musician Karen Carpenter, who died in 1983

Everyone was feasting on lobster and caviar, with the exception of Karen, who was separated from [Thomas] Burris by then and was staying in Manhattan for treatment for anorexia nervosa. She was sick. She was very sick, Stephanie Spruill, a singer who worked with both women, sadly recalls. Olivia was trying to get her to eat... it was bad.

In mid-November 1982, Karen Carpenter, against the advice of her therapist, ended her treatment for anorexia nervosa in Manhattan and returned home to Los Angeles. (She lived in a 3,000-square-foot penthouse in Century City, where Olivia visited her often over the years.) Karen made visits to Olivia's home in Malibu, too Olivia's friend and, at that time, neighbor Stephen Sinclair, recalls seeing her there a number of times. Olivia, he recalls, tried just so hard, tried and tried to help her along and was a good friend to her. And she was a lovely girl, and every time I saw her, she was thinner.

In her memoir, Olivia wrote, The last time I saw her, we were both staying at the Drake Hotel in New York and she looked so much better. Olivia told Karen's biographer, Randy L.. Schmidt, that she had been driving on a freeway in Los Angeles on February 4, 1983, when she heard on the radio that Karen had passed away earlier that day.

It was a terrible shock, Olivia told Schmidt. She had been on her way to a business lunch and upon arriving and sitting down, she just burst into tears. Olivia also told Schmidt that she and Karen had made plans to meet for lunch the next day.

She met her first husband, actor Matt Lattanzi, when he was a dancer in her 1980 film Xanadu. He was 20, she was 31.

Martin Samuel saw the relationship between Olivia and Matt develop on the set of Xanadu. They just fell in love, and it was, you know, beautiful, he says. It had to be kept secret. No one knew on the production at all. And so, we used to, in those days at Universal, they still had those little cottages where the actors and actresses would be instead of trailers, all self-contained. And so, Livvy used to have her hair and makeup done in there a lot of the time. That'd he first thing in the morning. And we used to kind of have to get Matt in to say hi and things like that without people seeing, without people knowing, just, you know, us, the little team that were with her.

Before the filming of Xanadu was completed. Matt was (secretly) spending most nights with Olivia in her suite at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.

She is so optimistic, said Matt Lattanzi in 1993, that I can only be optimistic too. Her ordeal after her first breast cancer diagnosis] became an ordeal for him as well. I can't tell you how much this has weighed on me, he told London journalist Fiona McIntosh. I've had my moments of weakness. I feared for her in my heart. I got depressed for her.

They divorced in 1995 after 10 years of marriage and welcoming daughter Chloe.

Olivia told interviewer Mia Freedman Because I was older [than Lattanzi], I think I always had a, maybe a slight knowing that it may not last forever because he was going to get to his manhood and, you know, it's kind of normal that he might want to explore life or [that] it may not work. I didn't want that to happen, but I think in the back of my mind, maybe there was a knowingness.

She dated Patrick McDermott, a cameraman, until his mysterious disappearance off the California coast in 2005.

Patrick didn't always travel with Olivia, particularly when she went to Australia; after all, he had a job and a son in Los Angeles. The Australian journalists Neil McMahon (who become a friend of Olivia's) and Gerard Wright noted in 2005 that Olivia and Patrick did not [have] a traditional relationship, something friends are at pains to point out. One friend of hers told the journalists, on the condition of anonymity, Olivia tours six months of the year so they aren't in constant contact like a lot of other couples.

Olivia was still in Melbourne when she learned the news, which the Los Angeles Times would summarize with the headline Man Missing since Fishing Trip Is Sought: Performer Olivia Newton-John's close friend has been missing since July 1, when he was to return from an overnight excursion,

As press reports began suggesting that Patrick had been depressed and heavily in debt, Olivia contacted [security expert] Gavin de Becker. He sent a couple of his private investigators to Mexico, armed with a list of places there that Olivia remembered Patrick having talked about. They came up empty.

What the press didn't know, however, and what Olivia didn't reveal until she wrote her memoir, was that she and Patrick had always had an on-again, off-again relationship, and at the time of his disappearance, they had recently agreed that they were off-again, although she hadn't made any final decision to break up with him, Chong Lim, a music director and record producer who worked with Olivia for over 20 years, recalls that she had told him of some problems in her and Patrick's relationship.

I think there will always be a question mark, Olivia told a journalist in 2009. I don't think I will ever really be at peace with it. According to Olivia's friend Liona Boyd, She thought he'd been killed. She thought he drowned. She didn't believe all the rumors about the sightings in Mexico. She said, 'No, I don't believe that.'

After announcing in 2017 that her cancer had returned and spread, she continued performing and fundraising for the Olivia Newton-John Cancer & Wellness Centre to help others.

The last two or three years were very painful for Olivia, her nephew Emerson Newton-John told Michele Manelis in 2024, but she was very strong about it. He also told Manelis of a visit that he paid to Olivia at her ranch in 2021. They were sitting together outside, with no one else around, and she put her head on his shoulder and started sobbing, It was sad. Emerson said. I realized at that moment, 'She's ready'.

Silver Screen Steam

1. There was great chemistry, she once said of meeting and working with Travolta on the set of 1978's Grease. But they were both in relationships at the time.
2. She was very on edge about the roller-skating, says hairdresser Martin Samuel, who styled Newton-John (with Michael Beck) for 1980's Xanadu.
3. She and Travolta reunited and reignited the screen for the 1983 romcom Two of a Kind.

The Men in Her Life

John Travolta
Of course it's none of your business, Travolta once told a prying Joan Rivers of the romance rumors about him and close friend Newton-John (in 1977).

Matt Lattanzi
Though Newton-John and her first husband (in 1987 with daughter Chloe) split amid reports of his infidelity - he later married Cindy Jessup, their babysitter the exes remained friends.

Patrick McDermott
Newton-John (with him in 2001) never believed that her ex, who went missing at sea in 2005, faked his own death.

John Easterling
The star's widower and her daughter Chloe (photographed for People in 2023) continue her mission to help cancer patients and fund new research through onjfoundationfund.org.

Excepted from Little More Love: The Life and Legend of Olivia Newton-John, copyright 2025 by Matthew Hilt.