Olivia multi millionairess who frightens admirers
HOLLYWOOD HAS brought Olivia Newton-John, O.B.E. everything she ever dreamed of when she was a star-struck teenager starting out on her singing career.
“I used to read about all these big stars and think life must be perfect once you’ve got a big bank account, a great house, servants. Life must be wonderful…”
“And then when you get there you realise you are no different, you’re the same person. You have luxuries but you don’t have people because they see the illusion created around your name before they see you”.
“You have got to let them know that there’s a real person in there and you’re open to being talked to.”
Thirty-two-year-old Olivia came to America from Britain in 1972, on the strength of her first hit in the States If Not For You.
Two more hits later she was named the world’s top-selling female vocalist of 1974 and since then her company. Olivia Newton-John Enterprises has made her a multi-millionairess.
She looks what she tries hard to prove she isn’t: a sweet, young, vulnerable girl-next-door. “Nothing about my career is decided without my approval,” she says firmly. “I am in control of what I do.”
“Sometimes when you think how much is going on you think ‘this is ridiculous’ but you have to think of yourself as a business.”
The boss of the business is protected by a tight circle of friends, advisers, employees, managers.
Ex live-in boyfriend Lee Kramer is still her business manager and every career move is dicussed with him.
She complains she sometimes feels hemmed in. “You’re always aware you’re being watched wherever you go. I don’t want everyone to know where I was this morning, what I had for breakfast, who I was out with last night. So I don’t go out that much”.
“The biggest problem is security. I tend to forget about it and go off shopping by myself and constantly get told off because there are a lot of strange people around”.
“You don’t think of things like that when you dream as a kid. And you don’t think then that you’re going to be so short of time. There’s still so much I want to do.”
“I really would like to get married and start a family. It’s not easy. Guys don’t usually come up to me. They’re more frightened than anything. I think successful women in any walk of life have this problem”.
“That’s why I want people to know I’m human I’m nice, ordinary and down to earth. Olivia Newton-John Enterprises is just an illusion.”
>Editor's note - I've always like this photo and the dog at her feet. It was a clipping I had as a child and read many times.