The playfully romantic teen musical “Grease” made the then 28-year-old famous. Olivia Newton-John fought breast cancer for decades, she was 73 years old.
Over 40 years ago, young Olivia Newton-John squeezed into a skintight leather outfit and became world famous in “Grease” alongside John Travolta. Danny and Sandy were the high school couple who posed and flirted, snuggled and flirted in the 1978 musical film. In it, the blond, curly-haired actress and singer developed from a good schoolgirl to a 1950s sex bomb. Sublimated in the duet “You’re The One That I Want” with John Travolta.
“It was an eye-opener for me too, because I was more of a bohemian hippie type when it came to my clothing style, and that was va-va-va-boom!” she wrote in her memoirs. It was for this role that the British-Australian actress (by the way, granddaughter of the German quantum physicist and Nobel Prize winner Max Born) is best remembered. Although she also had a music career: she received four Grammys between 1973 and 1982.
She publicly led the fight against cancer, which she now succumbed to at the age of 73. Her husband announced that she died “peacefully” on Monday at their ranch in southern California. She was surrounded by friends and family. After her death, Travolta wrote, “My dearest Olivia, you have made all of our lives so much better.” He signed it “Your Danny, your John!”.
First cancer in 1992
In 1992 she was diagnosed with cancer for the first time and had to have a breast removed. In 2013, the cancer returned and also spread to the shoulder. In 2018, a tumor was found in her lower spine. In 2019, Newton-John auctioned off her iconic “Grease” outfits along with 500 pieces from her closet and keepsake collection – for a good cause. Part of the auction proceeds went to a cancer center she founded in Australia.
“Hopefully it will help us to beat cancer, that’s my dream,” she said in an interview with dpa at the time. In the run-up to the auction, she was in the limelight and shone for photographers. “I’m doing fantastically well,” she said. “A year ago I couldn’t walk and now I’m back on my feet.”
German-British born in 1948
Little Olivia was born on September 26, 1948 into a German-British academic family. Her grandfather Max Born fled with his family from the Nazis to Cambridge in 1933. When she was five years old, the family emigrated to Australia. Newton-John formed a girl band there as a teenager.
A talent competition brought the 15-year-old back to Britain, where she recorded her first record in 1966. In 1974 she represented Great Britain with her song “Long Live Love” in the Eurovision Song Contest in Brighton and came fourth. Then “Grease” came and made her world famous.
She later stood in front of the camera on roller skates for the fantasy musical “Xanadu” (1980) and landed a number one hit in her adopted country, the USA, with the album “Physical” in 1981. She was also successful in Germany. The album won a Grammy, but some American radio stations banned the songs because of explicit sexual innuendos.
The high flight ended in 1992: her father died of liver cancer, and a little later Newton-John was diagnosed with breast cancer. She has worked tirelessly for breast cancer survivors ever since, raising funds for research and treatment. In 2008 she married her second husband, businessman John Easterling, with whom she shared an interest in natural medicine.
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