Olivia Newton-John

Olivia Newton-John, AO, OBE (born 26 September 1948) is an English-born Australian singer, songwriter, and actress. She is a four-time Grammy award winner who has amassed five No. 1 and ten other Top Ten Billboard Hot 100 singles and two No. 1 Billboard 200 solo albums. Eleven of her singles (including two platinum) and 14 of her albums (including two platinum and four double platinum) have been certified gold by the RIAA. Her music has been successful in multiple genres including pop, country and adult contemporary and has sold an estimated over 100 million records worldwide. She co-starred with John Travolta in the film adaptation of the Broadway musical Grease, which featured one of the most successful film soundtracks in Hollywood history. --- Olivia Newton-John was born in Cambridge, England, to a Welsh father, Brinley ("Bryn") Newton-John, and a Berlin-born mother, Irene Helene (née Born), the eldest child of the Nobel Prize-winning atomic physicist Max Born. Her mother's family had left Germany before World War II to avoid the Nazi regime (Newton-John's maternal grandfather was Jewish, and her maternal grandmother was of paternal Jewish ancestry). She is a distant relative of comedian Ben Elton. Her maternal great-grandfather was jurist Victor Ehrenberg and her matrilineal great-grandmother's father was German jurist Rudolf von Jhering. Newton-John is the youngest of three children, following brother Hugh, a doctor, and sister Rona, an actress who was married to Grease co-star Jeff Conaway from 1980 until their divorce in 1985. Newton-John's father was an MI5 officer on the Enigma project at Bletchley Park who took Rudolf Hess into custody during the Second World War. In 1954, when she was six, Newton-John's family emigrated to Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, where her father worked as a professor of German and as Master of Ormond College at the University of Melbourne. At fourteen Newton-John formed a short-lived all-girl group, Sol Four, with three classmates often performing in a coffee shop owned by her brother-in-law. She became a regular on local Australian radio and television shows including HSV-7's The Happy Show where she performed as "Lovely Livvy". She also appeared on the Go Show where she met future duet partner, Pat Carroll, and future music producer John Farrar (Carroll and Farrar would later marry). She entered and won a talent contest on the television program Sing, Sing, Sing, hosted by 1960s Australian icon Johnny O'Keefe, performing the songs "Anyone Who Had a Heart" and "Everything's Coming Up Roses". Newton-John was initially reluctant to use the prize she had won, a trip to Britain, but travelled there nearly a year later after her mother encouraged her to broaden her horizons. --- Newton-John released her first solo album, If Not For You (No. 158 Pop), in 1971. The title track, written by Bob Dylan and previously recorded by ex-Beatle George Harrison for his 1970 album All Things Must Pass, was her first international hit (No. 25 Pop, No. 1 Adult Contemporary ("AC")). Her follow-up single, "Banks of the Ohio", was a top 10 hit in Great Britain and Australia. She was voted Best British Female Vocalist two years in a row by the magazine Record Mirror. She made frequent appearances on Cliff Richard's weekly show, It's Cliff Richard, and starred with him in the telefilm, The Case. In 1974, Newton-John represented the United Kingdom in the Eurovision Song Contest with the song "Long Live Love". The song was chosen for Newton-John by the British public out of six possible entries. (Newton-John later admitted that she disliked the song.) Newton-John placed fourth at the contest held in Brighton behind ABBA's winning "Waterloo". All six Eurovision contest song candidates were recorded by Newton-John and included on her Long Live Love album, her first for the EMI Records label. In the United States, Newton-John's career floundered after If Not For You. Subsequent singles including "Banks of the Ohio" (No. 94 Pop, No. 34 AC) and remakes of George Harrison's "What Is Life" (No. 34 AC) and John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads" (No. 119 Pop) made minimal chart impact until the release of "Let Me Be There" in 1973. The song reached the American Top 10 on the Pop (No. 6), Country (No. 7), and AC (No. 3) charts and earned her a Grammy for Best Country Female and an Academy of Country Music award for Most Promising Female Vocalist. The album, Let Me Be There, charted No. 1 on Country Albums for two weeks as well as No. 54 on the Billboard 200. The Long Live Love album was released in the United States as If You Love Me, Let Me Know with the six Eurovision songs dropped for four different, more country-oriented tracks intended to capitalise on the success of "Let Me Be There". The title track was the first single reaching No. 5 Pop, No. 2 Country (her best country placement to date) and No. 2 AC. The next single, "I Honestly Love You", became Newton-John's signature song. Written and composed by Jeff Barry and Peter Allen, the ballad became her first No. 1 Pop (two weeks), second No. 1 AC (three weeks) and third Top 10 Country (No. 6) hit and earned Newton-John two more Grammys for Record of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance-Female. The success of both singles helped the album reach No. 1 on both the Pop (one week) and Country (eight weeks) Albums charts. Newton-John recorded her first single, "Till You Say You'll Be Mine" b/w "Forever", in Britain for Decca Records in 1966. Newton-John was homesick in Britain for her then-boyfriend, Ian Turpie, with whom she had co-starred in the Australian telefilm, Funny Things Happen Down Under. Newton-John would repeatedly book trips back to Australia that her mother would subsequently cancel. Newton-John's outlook changed when Pat Carroll also moved to the UK. The two formed a duo called "Pat and Olivia" and toured nightclubs in Europe. (In one incident, they were booked at Paul Raymond's Revue in Soho, London. Dressed primly in frilly, high-collared dresses, they were unaware that this was a strip club until they began to perform onstage.) After Carroll's visa expired forcing her to return to Australia, Newton-John remained in Britain to pursue solo work until 1975. She became engaged to the Shadows' guitarist Bruce Welch, but they never married. Newton-John was recruited for the group Toomorrow formed by American producer Don Kirshner, who was also the music consultant for the earliest recordings of the Monkees. In 1970, the group starred in a "science fiction musical" film and recorded an accompanying soundtrack album both named after the group. The project bombed and the group disbanded. --- Newton-John's career soared after starring in the film adaptation of the Broadway musical, Grease, in 1978. She was offered the lead role of Sandy after meeting producer Allan Carr at a dinner party at Helen Reddy's home. Burned by her Toomorrow experience and concerned that she was too old to play a high school senior (she turned 29 during the latter 1977 filming), Newton-John insisted on a screen test with the film's co-star, John Travolta. The film accommodated Newton-John's Australian accent by recasting her character from the play's original American Sandy Dumbrowski to Sandy Olsson, an Australian who holidays and then moves with her family to the United States. Newton-John previewed some of the film's soundtrack during her second American network television special, Olivia, featuring guests ABBA and Andy Gibb. Grease became the biggest box-office hit of 1978. The soundtrack album spent 12 non-consecutive weeks at No. 1 and yielded three Top 5 singles for Newton-John: the platinum "You're The One That I Want" (No. 1 Pop, No. 23 AC) with John Travolta, the gold "Hopelessly Devoted to You" (No. 3 Pop, No. 20 Country, No. 7 AC) and the gold "Summer Nights" (No. 5 Pop, No. 21 AC) with John Travolta and the film's cast. The former two songs were written and composed by Newton-John's long-time music producer, John Farrar, specifically for the film. ("Summer Nights" was from the original play written by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey.) Newton-John became the second woman (after Linda Ronstadt in 1977) to have two singles – "Hopelessly Devoted to You" and "Summer Nights" – in the Billboard Top 5 simultaneously. Newton-John's performance earned her a People's Choice award for Favourite Film Actress. She was also nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Actress in a Musical and performed the Oscar-nominated "Hopelessly Devoted to You" at the 1979 Academy Awards. The film's popularity has endured through the years. It was re-released for its 20th anniversary in 1998 and ranked as the second highest grossing film behind Titanic in its opening weekend. It was most recently re-released in July 2010 as a sing-along version in select American theatres. The soundtrack still sells strongly enough to often appear on Billboard'sTop Soundtracks chart. --- Newton-John has been married twice. She currently lives with her second husband, John Easterling, in Jupiter Inlet Colony, Florida. She is the mother of one daughter, Chloe Rose Lattanzi, with her first husband, actor Matt Lattanzi.