Olivia a new maturity Down Under Special
By Ivor Davis
Olivia Newton-John is having a party in her flagship Koala Blue boutique and milk bar on Melrose Avenue in the heart of Hollywood. The shrimps are sizzling on the barbecue, the Foster’s is flowing and the band in the background is hammering out a rather loud version of Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport. It’s a fun time but the blonde, Aussie-reared star is getting serious. It’s a crucial time in her life. Motherhood took her out of the Hollywood mainstream for more than two years, but now she’s back.
The bubbly singer/actress takes a break from the party to talk bluntly and frankly about love, marriage, children and life as she approaches her 40th birthday. Despite rumors and published reports, that she’s having a second child, Olivia says: “I’m not pregnant, but I’m hoping. I do so want another baby.” A boy next time? “It would be great, but you can’t choose, can you,” she replies with a girlish giggle. “I wouldn’t mind as long as he or she is healthy. Two would be perfect.”
Olivia, who will turn 40 on September 26, looks a dozen years younger. But it’s a mature Olivia who talks of her rich world crowded with a new TV special, a new album, new horizons for her chain of boutiques, and life with her darling daughter Chloe and her actor husband Matt Lattanzi. And while she awaits the reaction to the new TV special and her new album The Rumour, she chatters at machine-gun pace about the two-year-old apple of her eye, who shares some of the limelight with her famous mum in a beautifully shot beach sequence in the Olivia Newton-John In Australia special.
The Seven Network will screen the special in Australia later this year. “I hope I’ve matured in the past few years,” Olivia says. “And I think some of the songs in my new album reflect that. I wrote four of them. It’s a very personal album. “Since I had Chloe and I became a parent, I’ve become a lot more aware. When you have a child your horizons are opened up. “The most important thing in my life is Chloe, and my husband and I want the world to be a better place for her. Motherhood has done it no doubt. I’ve come to a time in my life when I don’t want to do a frivolous pop album (The Rumour is her first since the 1985 Soul Kiss). I can’t compete with the 15 or 16-year-old pop singers. Now I want to do something that means something to me… about women of the Eighties … what I feel, what I observe.”
One of her new songs chronicles the plight of the single mother. “I wrote it because I have a good friend who has a number of children and she’s going through a divorce and raising them on her own,” she says. “I sympathise with her plight.” There are also songs about AIDS a disease that has devastated many in showbusiness in Hollywood and one about ecology. “I wrote the ecology one because I want there to be forests and animals for my daughter to enjoy.”
With maturity, admits Olivia, has come a new attitude towards Chloe’s security. At one time she was fiercely protective of her child to the point of what some believed was an obsession. “It was natural I was protective, but now I’m more relaxed,” she says. “When I filmed the special with Chloe in Australia, I felt very safe there. With the first child, I realised, you give them much more cushioning than they need. I thought having her in the special would be a wonderful memory for her to have. I didn’t feel as though she had to pose for 100 cameras there was just one.”
Security for Olivia herself sometimes rivals that for an American presidential candidate. Her security men often demand to see the floor plans of buildings in which Olivia is appearing. Such was the case at a recent television interview and at a down-town hotel where a reception was held for the star. Olivia says she is very happy with her marriage and her life. “I feel I’m just coming into the happiest time of my life. It seems to be getting better. I’m not terrified of getting older we’re all getting older, there’s no getting round it.”
Matt is not present at the Koala Blue party. “He’s in Spain showing his new movie Blueberry Hill in a competition,” she explains. A decade or so ago, admits Olivia, she was worried that any man she went with or married might not be able to cope with her fame and would end up being known as Mr Olivia Newton-John. “Everyone goes through difficult times in their life with their own personal problems, and I have. But Matt and I have a great relationship. There’s never been competition between us. He’s never felt threatened, because he’s very confident of himself and who he is. Ours was the very first relationship I had where I didn’t feel any competitive undercurrent.”
The future, she says, looks very rosy. There’s plenty of plans on the Koala Blue front, with projections that the 16 stores will do $7.5 million in business in 1988. Are there plans for any movies or concert tours? “I’d like to do a movie if the right script came along, and if we could shoot in Los Angeles close to my home in Malibu,” she says. “But on the concert front, no. I wouldn’t want to be away from Chloe for three months.” At this moment, two huge screens flash clips of Olivia’s Australia special, showing her cavorting in sand and surf with fair- haired Chloe clad all in pink. “Now you can see what I mean,” Olivia coos.