Newton-John reclaims her story
The singer-actor took to the page to protect image after learning a TV biopic was in the works
Forty years ago, Olivia NewtonJ-ohn launched a million dreams — and, later, feminist backlash — when she stepped onto a high school field in a pair of skin-tight black pants, puffing a cigarette, her hair tarted up in curls.
As Sandy in Grease, she became the embodiment of the good-girl-gone-bad, the one who ditched her cardigan for a leather jacket and swiveled her hips suggestively as she teased a gobsmacked Danny (John Travolta) about how to keep her satisfied.
Today, at 70, she’s singing a different song.
“I’m a housewife and I’m loving that,” she enthused in a phone interview from her home outside Los Angeles.
She is also now an author. Her book, the memoir Don’t Stop
Believin’ — its title borrowed from her 1976 hit, not the Journey song or the Glee remake — came out March 12.
Newton-John says she took to the page in part to protect her image. When she learned that a lengthy television biopic was in the works, she worried about what it might say, so she decided to write her own version of events.
(She has not seen the film, which aired on Lifetime last month.)
Anyone who has been through a supermarket checkout over the past few decades can probably understand why NewtonJohn might be concerned.
Since she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1992, the singer-actor has been a tabloid target, her health the subject of wild speculation. When cancer returned in 2013, to her sacrum, the singer-actor was able to keep it mostly under wraps.
But in September, after she checked herself into the Melbourne cancer centre that bears her name, rumours spread that she was near death. In January, Newton-John took to social media, posting a video as proof of life. As she promotes her book on the morning TV circuit, she beams positivity and cheer.
Although she is grateful for the concern over her health — “I think it’s lovely that people care,” she said — reading about her death wasn’t easy: “I was like ‘What, no! I think I’m still here!’ ”
Five months after she fractured her pelvis, Newton-John is moving much better, without the help of a walker, she says.
But the incident has shifted her priorities. She talks less about singing and more about caring for herself, her family and her mini-horses, dog and cat. “Table tennis and ponies have replaced horseback riding and real tennis,” she says.
She has completed radiotherapy and is receiving hormonal and alternative treatments. Her days begin with a thick, green algae drink prepared by her husband, John Easterling, who owns an herb company; she also takes medicinal cannabis.
In conversation, Newton-John is animated and sharp.
“That’s all in my book!” she points out when asked whether it’s true that she almost turned down the Sandy role because she thought that, at 29, she was too old to play a high school student. (Travolta was 24.)
She did equivocate on taking the part, she confirms nonetheless: “I was very nervous about pulling it off. When I look at it now, I think I was nuts. But when you’re really young, you’re just more fussy about that stuff. When you’re older, you’re just grateful.”
She admits to being equally nervous about the sexually suggestive 1981 music video “Physical.” At the time, she worried “it was too raunchy and racy.”
It turned out to be her biggest record and now her only regret is that she didn’t start a leotard company then.
“Jane Fonda kind of took that spot from me,” she jokes.
And what of feminists who question the plot of Grease?
“I think people are thinking too deeply about it,” she says.
To the accusation that the movie was telling girls to “sex it up to get their man,” she replies in her book.
“It was about choice. Wear those pants or a dress down to the floor. Empowerment comes from calling your own shots and being who you want to be.”
As a Hollywood tell-all, Newton-John’s book is not terribly juicy. It’s more gossip-dispelling than gossip-spilling: she and Travolta were never more than good friends, she had to be sewn into those “You’re the One That I Want” black pants every day, the red heels were her own, people still call her Sandy and she doesn’t mind.