Olivia Newton-John, singer and actor
GREASE MADE HER a household name in 1978, but these days grease is firmly off the menu at Olivia Newton-John’s house. Since she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1992, the former pop star has been an advocate for healthy living, and last month she launched her cookbook, Livwise – Easy Recipes for a Healthy, Happy Life. At 63, and with a successful career as a singer, actress and entrepreneur, it looks as if Olivia Newton-John has found the right recipe.
The most enduring image of Newton-John is the final scene in Grease where she appears in figure-hugging black leather pants, smoking a cigarette, and launches into You’re The One That I Want with her co-star, John Travolta.
The leather pants were so tight, she had to be stitched into them to shoot the scene. Last week, she announced her intention to auction off the iconic keks to raise funds for a wellness centre she is opening in her home town of Melbourne. The lucky bidder will have to be very skinny to fit into them.
Olivia Newton-John had her first hit with a Bob Dylan song, If Not For You, in 1971. For the next few years, she was the downhome-girl-next-door type, charting with country-flavoured songs such as Banks of the Ohio and John Denver’s Take Me Home, Country Roads.
She represented the UK in the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest, but lost to Sweden’s entry, Waterloo, sung by a group called Abba.
Soon, the hits started to dry up, until the offer came to star in a movie version of the successful stage musical Grease. It sent her career into the stratosphere, and her character Sandy became a heroine for a million young moviegoers.
After Grease, Olivia jettisoned the goody-two-shoes image and recast herself as a glam diva, via the sci-fi movie musical Xanadu and the raunchy workout video for Physical. As the hits dried up in the mid-1980s, Liv was reinventing herself again, opening her Koala Blue chain of boutiques.
She tried for a comeback in 1988 but couldn’t compete with new teen stars such as Tiffany, Debbie Gibson and Kylie Minogue.
Plans for another comeback in 1992 were halted when she learned she had breast cancer.
Twenty years later, Olivia Newton-John has the healthy sheen of a survivor, and although she still performs regularly (she recently did a tour of southeast Asia) the music is of the “healing” kind; she’s more active in running her Gaia retreat and spa in Byron Bay, Australia, and doing such fundraising feats as walking the Great Wall of China.
She lives in Florida with her husband, John Easterling, who owns a natural remedy company. She has one daughter, Chloe, from her first marriage.
Kevin Courtney
