26 September 1948 – 8 August 2022
The actor who played Frenchy remembers her Grease co-star with whom she shared a deep friendship for more than 40 years
The first time I met Olivia Newton-John was on the set of Grease in 1977. She arrived in this white T-Bird convertible with the top down. It was gorgeous, and she was gorgeous. With stars, you tend to keep a distance until you feel that the time is right, so we didn’t talk too much at first, except that she told me how cute she thought John Travolta was.
When we did our first day of shooting together, she was very nervous, so being the veteran film actress I was (I only did two movies before that one) I began to improvise with her as [my character] Frenchy. I’m going: “Oh, Sandy. I’m so happy you’re my neighbour and we can come to school together!”, and she’s looking at me like, is this in the script? But then she caught on and we had so much fun. I said: “What was it like going to school in Australia?” She said: “Oh my God. I had to wear gloves, and the boys went in one place and girls went in another.” And before we knew it, Randal [Kleiser], our director, was saying “Action”. She hugged and kissed me afterwards and said “thank you, thank you!” for helping to break the ice.
