OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN

(26 September 1948 – 8 August 2022)

The actress and singer Olivia Newton-John, who has died aged 73 from breast cancer, was a much-loved performer with over twenty-five Top 40 singles and some fifteen albums. She also became a spokesperson for the Liv, a device for women to aid in the detection of cancer. She herself had an ongoing fight with the disease from 1992 when she underwent surgery and again in 2013, when the Australian government issued a postage stamp to raise funds for her Cancer and Wellness Research Centre.

Olivia Newton-John was born in Cambridge in the UK, the daughter of a German mother, Irene Born, and father, Brinley Newton-John, a former MI5 officer and later a headmaster. In 1954 the family emigrated to Australia. At the age of fourteen Olivia was in an all-girl group called Sol Four and began singing on Australian television where she met her duet partner Pat Carroll. Winning a talent contest saw her moving to the UK and touring the nightclubs of Europe. When Carroll returned to Australia, Olivia joined a group called Toomorrow [sic] with an unsuccessful film of the same name. She recorded her first solo album, If Not for You, with a title track by Bob Dylan. She went on to appear with Cliff Richard on his TV show and continued issuing records including numbers by George Harrison, John Denver and some Country songs. In 1974 she represented the UK in the Eurovision Song Contest with ‘Long Live Love’ and came fourth behind Abba and their ‘Waterloo’. Moving to the US, she repeated her success as a singer there.

In 1978 came the film Grease with John Travolta, despite her feeling that at 28 she was too old to play the teenager Sandy Olsson. The film was an enormous hit, the biggest of its year, and the soundtrack begat three chart singles, ‘You're the One That I Want’, ‘Hopelessly Devoted to You’ and ‘Summer Nights’. She was nominated for a Golden Globe and sang ‘Hopelessly Devoted to You’ at the 1979 Academy Awards. Her biggest personal hit was the song ‘Physical’ for which she exchanged her girl-next-door image for a leather-clad appearance. Unfortunately, her success was not repeated in the other films she made, including Xanadu (1980) with Gene Kelly, Two of a Kind (1983) with Travolta again, and It's My Party (1996) with Eric Roberts and George Segal, plus a few others and some TV movies. However, her popularity remained and she sold over 100m records, winning four Grammys. Among other awards she also received the OBE in 1979 and became Dame Commander in 2000 for her services to charity, cancer research and entertainment. She published her autobiography, Don't Stop Believin' in 2008.

Olivia Newton-John married the actor Matt Lattanzi and they have a daughter, Chloe. She also had relationships with Bruce Welch of The Shadows and the businessman Lee Kramer, who became her manager. After divorcing Lattanzi in 1995, she lived with the cameraman Patrick McDermott, but he went missing in 2005, only to be found four years later in Mexico. She was married to the businessman and environmentalist John Easterling from 2008 until her death.

MICHAEL DARVELL