Olivia takes stock of stardom
By Lenore Nicklin
Sporting her new short hairdo and her famous smile, Olivia Newton-John said: “I think now I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.” She had just come from eating “fish and chips” at Fanny’s, the opulent Melbourne restaurant, and earlier that morning had gone jogging in the park. This, after all, is the new “physical” side of Olivia Newton-John.
She was in Melbourne to perform at the Logie awards presentation before flying off to her farm on the north coast of NSW to check out the sugar cane, the custard apples and the avocados. From her Melbourne hotel room she could see the house she lived in from the age of five to 15. At 16, after winning a talent quest on “The John O’Keefe Show’ she took off for London fame and fortune.
The last time Olivia was in Australia she called herself Hazel Jackson, donned a pair of dark glasses and, almost incognito, stayed at the Sydney Hilton for few days. Her last official visit was in August 1980, to promote her film “Xanadu” or, as it became known “Xanadon’t”. The film was a resounding flop and taught her, she says ruefully never to agree to do a movie before the script is finished. On the flight to Australia this time she read two film scripts. “I would like to act in a straight movie,” she said. “I saw ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’ and ‘Caddie’ I’d like to do something of that calibre but finding a good movie is the hardest thing to do.”
The offer of a role in the film version of D. H. Lawrence’s “Kangaroo” opposite Bryan Brown had been “a lot of talk but no action”. One movie definitely planned is “a grown-up comedy” opposite her Grease co-star John Travolta. Thirty-three years old, Olivia has finally rid herself of her image of a sweet innocent, latter-day Doris Day. “Goody goody goes greaser,” said the American papers when she rock-‘n’-rolled to stardom in “Grease”. Now goody-goody has gone physical. She had not made an album for three years when she made “Physical”. The album sold more than two million copies, the title single stayed on the top of the American charts for an almost record-breaking 10 weeks and the words so shocked the people of Salt Lake City that the record was banned in Utah.
“Let’s get physical, let’s get animal,” sings Olivia. She had been really nervous about the album. “I was a wreck,” she said. “I wanted to revoice Physical I had already revoiced it twice. I knew it would be either a big success or a monumental disaster.” Olivia toured Europe, Japan and South America to promote the album. She also made a TV special which showed her in slinky, skimpy costumes. Some TV stations censored parts of the special on the grounds that it was too suggestive. What had happened to the wholesome girl who used to sing sweet ballads like “I Honestly Love You”?
“I cut my hair,” said Olivia. “I was bored with being a blonde and my hair was a wreck. I cut my hair and from that day on I had a new image.” Olivia also acquired a new boyfriend a 23- year-old John Travolta look-alike dancer-actor called Matt Lattanzi. The pair met on the set of “Xanadu” and for two years Matt has shared her Malibu house along with eight dogs, five horses and two cats. (Olivia has always said that if her career failed the would work as a veterinary assistant).
Would Matt be coming to Australia? “No, I wish he were,” said Olivia. “He is visiting his family in Portland, Oregon. He hasn’t seen them for more than a year.” Lattanzi’s career is also progressing nicely. From a dancing role in “Xanadu” he moved on to a small part in “Rich and Famous” with Jacqueline Bisset and Candice Bergen. He has just finished “Grease II”.
Olivia hopes to return to live in Australia in perhaps five years. Her mother lives in Melbourne and her father, Professor Bryn Newton-John, in Sydney. (Her parents divorced when she was 10.) Her brother is a senior doctor at Melbourne’s Fairfield Hospital and her grandfather was the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Max Born. Like the old Olivia, the new Olivia gives little away. It is hard to know what lies behind the smile, the blandness, the predictable answers. She has succeeded in the toughest of careers but no scars show.
In 1978 she filed a $10 million law suit against MCA Records charging the company with failure to adequately promote and advertise her product. Surely that must have been her manager’s idea? “People don’t want to hear that you’re nice,” she once told the “Los Angeles Times.” “But that’s what I am.” Now, she’s not only nice but sexy, too. Sorry, Physical.