There's no better place than amongst the kangaroos
Translation from Italian:
There’s no room for her among the kangaroos now… When I started singing, many critics turned up their noses and said she’d be better off going back to the kangaroos, in Australia. But now that she’s sold thirty million records, they want her to keep singing.
Now she has the hair and the jaunty new look of 1982. Even the makeup is different, with her eyes a little more prominent and the shades on her cheeks and forehead more decisive.
In short, she is no longer the fresh-faced girl launched by Grease, the romantic skater of Xanadu now Olivia Newton-John fully reflects the canons of new female beauty, and the new generation of fifteen-year-olds takes her as a role model.
And then, beyond the image, and above all beyond the image, there is her voice. That voice that has won over the public and the harshest critics.
It led Olivia to sell around thirty million records. In short, beautiful. Good, nice, available: she has everything to please. To be loved. And yet she says at the beginning the most malicious critics labeled me as the “smiling” who doesn’t know music, doesn’t know the American accent and would do well to go back to her home, in Australia.
But she isn’t bitter about these memories: on the contrary, she says that these things served as an incentive for her, because it was a challenge and she had decided to win. - Now you’ve won by a landslide.
What is your assessment as a woman and as an artist?
“I feel like I’m in the most magical moment of my career and of my life. At thirty-two, I am fully aware of my life, my ambitions, my desires, my possibilities. As a singer, I think I’ve entered the international rock scene very well, and the success of my latest album, Physical, fully demonstrates this. As a woman, I found in the love of Matt, an Italian-American with a life in Los Angeles, all the happiness and my inner fulfilment… “
“In short, what more could I want? In America, I’m always the next door girl, the one who fulfils the dreams of the average American, his wife and his children. “
Do you like this role?
“I feel it fits me quite well, because I am actually what the public imagines. I’m simple, spontaneous, available to everyone. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t take drugs. When I’m nervous or depressed, I cry: tears cheer me up and release tension. I don’t take sleeping pills and I don’t suffer from neurosis: I think I’m the only one, one of the few actresses in Hollywood who has never been to a psychoanalyst… In short, I’m simple, and perhaps in simplicity there…My charm is precisely my own.”
Are you thinking about marriage?
“For now, yes. Marriage scares me, because I see too many divorces around me. And yes, marriage also means children, more specific and serious commitments that maybe end up hindering your career and changing your life… No, for now everything is fine like this: Matt and I are together because we want to, because every day we want to meet again, without obligations or constraints. Maybe tomorrow we’ll get married, but we’ll have to be sure that it won’t be a rash move, and we’ll be ready to face all the changes in our lives. I don’t accept superficiality: it’s the only thing I condemn in people.”
By Laureen Colin
Chauvinistic and faithful
“I’m sweet, submissive, balanced, fairly careful with my spending, and generous and secure in all my relationships.
In my relationships with men, I’m submissive and faithful. My anti-feminism has provoked violent reactions from the most angry exponents of the American Women’s Liberation Movement.
On the other hand, I believe that for a couple to get along, one person must be in charge. And, in my opinion, the one who holds all the power is precisely him, the man. I grew up with these ideas, and I don’t want to do anything to change them, because I firmly believe in them.
In Australia, when I was a child, I and other girls weren’t supposed to have ambitions: only boys had the right to act. All we could do was go to football games and cheer them on…
Of course, a woman’s role must be lived with intelligence and awareness, but without passivity. I find it so reassuring to let a man guide you. And he likes it so much….”
Olivia and the cinema.
In our country, she became known as the actress in the film Grease, alongside John Travolta, the Saturday night hero who, for a few seasons, knocked at the hearts of all the girls and reassured their mothers with his good-boy air.
She was Sandy, our hero’s girlfriend, and all the teenagers dreamed of being a little like her. There was talk, then, of a flirtation between Olivia and John, but she always denied it.
In fact, she has always reiterated her lack of romantic love towards Travolta. She said: “I knew John as an actor, but not as a man. I considered him too ‘Italian’,” that is, the type of Italian male who creates a vacuum around himself and doesn’t even leave a little space for women, so much so that he’s afraid that somehow she might overshadow him…”
However, thanks to Travolta, Olivia was in all the newspapers, they dedicated features and covers to her, everyone began to know her and talk about her.
Then, there was Xanadu, a musical with Gene Kelly and Michael Beck, which had a rather lukewarm reception in Italy, but in America it repeated its success.
Now, the cinematic discussion is somewhat put aside: the fresh-faced girl feels ready for new roles, perhaps dramatic ones, and wants to wait for a good opportunity to return to the set. In the meantime, she continues to diligently perfect her career as a singer.