Olivia Newton-John: Hopelessly Devoted to You
Lifetime movie profiles Australian actress/singer
According to information gleaned from the website OliviaNewton-John.com, actress and singer Olivia Newton-John was born in Cambridge, England, in 1948, but her family moved to Australia when she was 5. She is the youngest child of professor Brin and Irene Newton-John. Her mother is the daughter of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Born.
Her first big break was winning a talent contest on the TV show Sing, Sing, Sing. In 1963 at age 15, she formed a girl group, Sol 4, and was soon making appearances on daytime TV shows and pop music programs in Australia. She went on to create a double act, Pat & Olivia, with her friend Pat Carroll, and the duo toured army bases and clubs throughout Europe and the United Kingdom.
Newton-John cut her first single in 1966, and has since sold more than 100 million albums, won four Grammy Awards as well as Country Music, American Music and People’s Choice awards.
In 1978 she co-starred with John Travolta in the very successful musical Grease, and has gone on to star in less notable movies that include Two of a Kind, Xanadu, It’s My Party, Score: A Hockey Musical and A Few Best Men. Along the way Newton-John battled breast cancer and has been an advocate for promoting public awareness of early detection for more than 25 years.
To find out more, check out the Lifetime made-for-TV movie Olivia Newton-John: Hopelessly Devoted to You, which airs at 7 p.m. Saturday. Covering five decades, the movie delves into her public persona as well as the private woman behind the scenes.
Australian singer, songwriter and actress Delta Goodrem (House Husbands) stars as Newton-John, and Richard Brancatisano (Chasing Life) plays Matt Lattanzi, the star’s first husband. Morgan Griffin (San Andreas) plays a young Olivia, and Georgia Flood (American Princess) stars as her singing partner, Pat.
— Rosemary Boggs