Olivia's in love and is feeling happily Physical
By Colin Dangaard OLIVIA Newton-John’s love for a young man - and her passion for dolphins has inspired her first hit album in more than a year.
The album is called ‘physical’ - which is actly how Olivia, 33, feels about Matty Lattanzi, 21. The record’s title song is Number One on the hit parade. So is Matty.
“A gorgeous, lovely man,” she says.
The two met on the set of ‘Xanadu’ last year, and while the movie was disappointing, their love flourished, along with the music, the soundtrack selling several million copies.
Olivia was immediately taken by Matt’s innocence, adding: “He is unspoiled, nice….and genuine.”
And if this lady has her way, Matt Lattanzi will stay just that. “Hollywood is not going to destroy him,” she says resolutely.
FROM A dancing role in “Xanadu”, Matt moved up to speaking real words with Jacqueline Bisset and Candice Bergen in “Rich and Famous”.
He played one of Bisset’s love interests and got physical with her too. That was his well-muscled abdomen that Bisset stripped and admired.
But the real story was happening out at Olivia’s luxurious home in Malibu, where her horses graze overlooking the Pacific.
She had just emerged from a long relationship with her British producer and manager, Lee Kramer, the man who brought her to the U.S., landing her here a decade ago with three straight top records.
Olivia has remained one of the nation’s largest selling female vocalists, but she has made some mistakes too. She wishes, for example, that she had said something when she saw “Zanadu”” going bad. “The music was frantic,” she says, “but the script just didn’t hold together.”
TO HELP Matt on his rise to stardon- if it ever comes Olivia is drawing on personal experience.
She says: “I advise him to be picky, not to believe the flattery, or his own publicity, and to keep his feet on the ground.”
“I tell him that if you have good people working for you, and friends to encourage you, and if you have talent-you’ll be fine.”
“Hollywood is rough on kids who come here all by themselves, with no friends, nobody to talk with….”
Olivia also realizes Matt’s career will be much harder to launch than was her own. “For every part,” she says, “there are 500 actors. But for a singer, there may be 500 songs.”
Interestingly, while Olivia was putting Matt on the right track, he was subsconsciously putting her on a path to platinum.
THROUGH HIM, she re-discovered the joys of sweating: Matt runs several miles a day, plays tennis, scuba dives.
“He has definitely made me more physical,” she says.
Still, each of them is in areas foreign to the other.
She balked at scuba diving, explaining: “After living in Australia, I have a phobia about sharks. I sit on the shore with lunch.”
But Olivia got her turn to pull superiority when she introduced him to a sport at which she is expert: riding horses. After Matt tied into a problem on one of her mares, he lost his nerve. “But I’m working on him,” she says hopefully, “…and I think I’ll get him back on.”
Out of all this physical activity and happiness came the idea for the album that is now climbing charts everywhere, a single from it moving into the No. 1 spot.
Says Olivia: “I wanted to do something new. I was feeling so happy personally, and with my life, that I just didn’t want to sing terribly sad romantic ballads.”
“So I called my friends, told them what I was looking for and they produced.” (Friends like John Farrar, Barry Gibb, Terry Shaddick and Steve Kipner and Tom Snow.)
IT IS A young sound, and to accomodate it Olivia completely changed her looks. She has cut her hair, let it grow back to its natural color and tied on a bandana.
“I was,” she says, “just bored with the way I looked. My hair style wasn’t really current. It was very blonde, and I had had it for years and years.”
“My hair now fits my mood, and it’s easy to look after.”
Although Olivia made her name as a singer first, she notched up acclaim for her acting work in “Grease”.
“Everything since then has been a bonus,” she says.
Olivia has finally been cast in a movie to be made in her native Australia. Called “Kangaroo”, “, it is a story from D. H. Lawrence, set in the 20’s and 30’s. She will star opposite Bryan Brown of “Breaker Morant”.
ALL THIS pleases her but she does wonder why the Australians took so long to find her.
“Maybe,” she says, thinking aloud, “they didn’t really think I wanted to work down there. I let them know some time ago that I was interested.”
“But I’m glad they finally did call.”
Unlike some other exports from Australia, Olivia has remained very much an Australian: even in “Grease”, she insisisted the part be written so she could speak with her own accent.
AND TO THIS day she receives a supportive press in Australia a press most American entertainers find offensively aggressive.
“Obviously,” says Olivia, “They’re not mad at me for leaving.” But she is liked everywhere in that part of world: the Japanese are still mad at for cancelling a tour to protest the. slughtering of dolphin.
“I told them I would have done the same had fishermen in Germany England so behaved.”
Thus Olivia is using her high profile as an artist to help force change. One song on her album is called “The Promise” and it is a plea to the world to stop killing dolphins. Olivia wrote the number herself.
Meanwhile, Olivia looks at her situation as if it were all happening to someone else.