After Olivia Newton-John died in August 2022, praise for the 73-year-old was universal and universally glowing. Throughout her 60 years in public life, encompassing everything from a mysteriously missing boyfriend to Stage 4 cancer, no-one ever had a bad word to say about ONJ. “Love and light” was not just what she’d write beside her signature, it was her life motto. She never veered from those wholesome, positive principles.
No matter where you joined the ONJ journey – from Sandy in leather pants awkwardly attempting to smoke in Grease, to insisting on a tongue-in-cheek (and pro-gay) twist to the video for her most overtly sexual hit song “Physical” – Olivia was always herself. And her career became a blueprint for all Australian performers who followed.
She was born in England in 1948, and her grandfather was Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Born, an associate of Albert Einstein’s and a Polish-born Jew who had to flee the Nazis. Olivia’s family immigrated to Australia by boat when she was five.
One of her first television roles was on in 1964. There she met singer Pat Carroll (later Farrar), who, Olivia relocated to London at the end of the decade to pursue her musical career.
