Olivia Newton-John, Star Of 'Grease', Has Passed Away At Age 73
Olivia Newton-John has taken her car to the sky. The Australian actress and singer, beloved for her role as Sandy Olsson in the 1978 film adaptation of the musical Grease, died Monday, August 8, 2022, at the age of 73.
Born on September 26, 1948, in Cambridge in the United Kingdom, Newton-John already had two number-one albums on the Billboard 200 when she starred in Grease. Its soundtrack is one of the top-selling music records of all time and features several songs she leads or duets on, including “Summer Nights” and “Hopelessly Devoted to You”. These songs in particular were Billboard Top 5 simultaneously. Following a double platinum album called Totally Hot, she returned to the big screen with Xanadu, another musical that was panned critically and a box office flop. It has become a cult classic, in part for its soundtrack of late 1970s and early 1980s pop and rock music. This album reached double platinum as well. However, it was still a devastating blow to her acting career, compounded by the failure of her reteaming with John Travolta, in 1983’s Two of a Kind.
This resulted in her mostly leading TV movies after that point. Her music, on the other hand, would still be a hit in the ‘80s, especially with 1981’s career-defining “Physical”. Its music video was so “Of course we don’t mean sex, overzealous parents!” that in 2010 she got the chance to remake the video exactly how she meant it. She guest starred as herself on a first season episode of the Fox television phenomenon Glee, titled “Bad Reputation” with Jane Lynch’s Sue Sylvester joining her on vocals for plot reasons. She would make one more appearance in that season’s finale, “Journey (to Regionals)”, as Newton-John had been hired as a celebrity judge for the regional show choir competition.
Newton-John was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1979 and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2020 Honours for services to charity, cancer research, and entertainment. Her death was announced by her husband, John Easterling, through her Facebook page. She succumbed to breast cancer first diagnosed in 1992 and became metastatic in 2017. The diagnosis propelled her into becoming a breast cancer awareness spokesperson. The Olivia Newton-John Foundation Fund is dedicated to researching plant medicine and cancer. She is also survived by her daughter Chloe Lattanzi.