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Olivia Newton John

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“My dearest Olivia, you made our lives so much better. Your impact was incredible. I love you so much. We will see you on the road and we will all be together again. Yours from the first moment I saw you and forever! Your Danny , your John!”, John Travolta wrote on social networks upon learning of the death of Olivia Newton-John, his co-star in “Grease”, on August 8, 2022. The actress and singer had suffered from breast cancer since 1992, and although doctors managed to control it, in 2017, it spread to other parts of the body.

Born on September 26, 1948 in Cambridge (Great Britain), Olivia Newton-John was the daughter of a German and a British man. When her father was offered a job as a university professor in Melbourne, her family moved there, so she spent her childhood and adolescence in Australia.

Since she was little, she showed signs of her talent for song. At the age of 17, she made her Australian film debut with a role in the comedy  Funny Things Happen Down Under . In 1970 she auditioned to be part of the musical group  Toomorrow , with which she recorded an album and shot a film of the same name. She then put out solo records and represented Great Britain at the Brighton Eurovision Song Contest in 1974, although the Swedes Abba were the winners and she came fourth.

Due to the good repercussion of his work in the United States, he ended up going to live there, and managed to sweep both the field of pop and country music. She has become a celebrity and is offered the leading female role in  Grease , the translation to the screen of the musical by  Jim Jacobs ,  Warren Casey  and  Bronte Woodard . She played Sandy, a nice girl who discovers that her seemingly idyllic summer love, Danny Zuko ( John Travolta ), behaves like a ‘pimp’ in high school.

Olivia Newton-John really identified with her character. “I was a little naive, a little innocent at the time. I was 29 when I made the film, but I was playing a 17-year-old girl. She was a comfortable character for me in her more timid side, but her other side, the more scoundrel, it was quite a challenge. I had never developed her that way, although I think there is a bit of her in every woman. I was really nervous,” explains Olivia Newton-John.

The film was not only a success, but it marked a generation of young people and the soundtrack became a classic that still resonates often in fashionable venues.

In her next job,  Xanadú , she played a muse who seduces a desperate cartoonist. In the film she had to dance with  Gene Kelly himself . “I was nervous when I found out I was going to dance with him, and I was teaching dance classes for three months. He directed the scene, and he wanted to do it in one take. That meant if I made one mistake… But it was lovely, he was a very sweet man. I don’t think I realized how important that dance was until later, because you dance without thinking and then you realize… Oh my God, I danced with Gene Kelly!” recalls the actress and singer.

Despite the catchy songs, which had a great impact, the film failed, as  did Tal para tal , a comedy that meant his reunion with John Travolta. They played two young men who meet when he, a failed inventor, is forced to rob a bank. The public did not respond either, so Olivia Newton-John concentrated on her musical career and put aside her facet as an actress.

In the 90s, he returned to acting, in television series such as  The McGregor saga  and various telefilms. In the comedy  Una boda de muerte  she played the mother of the bride.

Married in 1984 to actor  Matt Lattanzi , they had a daughter, Chloe Rose, who was born in 1986. In the mid-1990s, she divorced and joined cameraman Patrick McDermott, who disappeared under mysterious circumstances in Mexico. Since July 2008, she shared her life with John Easterling, a billionaire.

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