After soaring to fame in Grease, Newton-John – who has died aged 73 – became the queen of the movie soundtrack album, and her roles in oddball hits Xanadu and A Mom for Christmas meant audiences never stopped loving her
Olivia Newton-John was an Australian recording star who achieved serious Hollywood fame with her starring role in the 1978 musical Grease, playing opposite the white-hot leading man of the moment, John Travolta. Just a few years earlier, she had come an ignominious fourth representing the UK in the Eurovision Song Contest (she was born in England), losing out to Abba’s Waterloo. But Grease made her a serious A-lister.
At the ages of 29 and 24, Newton-John and Travolta were playing high-school students Sandy and Danny in a fondly imagined 1950s – but no one questioned the age disparity at the time, and Newton-John was probably Hollywood’s last example of a mature juvenile lead. In Grease she is the sweet, pure virgin in love with the leather-jacketed cool kid – until the final number, when she embraces her inner biker chick to keep his heart ensnared. Sandy famously had to be rewritten from the stage version to explain her Australian accent: nowadays, Aussie stars such as Margot Robbie and the Hemsworth brothers do American accents indistinguishable from the real thing.
