Marriage and children or career?
At 28 the sweet faced Australian singer Olivia Newton-John faces a conflict in her life that confronts many women neither so famous nor so rich.
The girl whose singing has, as they say in the Hollywood circles, put the world at her feet, must choose between marriage and children, and a career.
In the past few months she has been through the kind of emotional upheavals that would send the average American star straight to the analyst’s couch.
Last year she broke up with her long time lover Lee Kramer, the Englishman who had been both friend and manager to her for the previous five years. Then there were rumours of a romance with John Travolta, her co-star in the screen version of the Broadway show Grease. so while she met one of the biggest challenges in her career, her personal life was in chaos.
“My life for the past few months has become incredibly busy,” she says, “but I have the feeling of some momentous changes happening underneath.”
“What happens when you work at this pace is that feelings get shovelled into a little box. You tell yourself I’ll deal with them later, but you can’t do that indefinitely.”
“Soon I’m going to have ot take stock. I’ve been thinking maybe I should buy a boat and sail away for a while. find out who I am.”
The big thing she has to find out is what to do about her relationship with Kramer. Working out the relationship, which has come together again in what appears to her friends to be a shaky way, means answering the major questions: marriage versus a career, children versus freedom.
Olivia Newton-John is a woman who feels the way many successful women approaching 30 do, that she’s childless but does she want a child? She’s in love with her work so does she really want to stop working? Would marriage and children rob her of something she can’t live without?
One, probably unfair interpretation out on Olivia Newton-John’s passion for animals (at last count she had six horses, four dogs and a cat) is that they are child substitutes.
Recently Olivia and Lee Kramer went on holiday to Brazil in an attempt to work out some solutions to their problems. More recently Kramer was quoted as saying that he and Olivia were “happier than we ever have been….we couldn’t be more happy.”
Yet the rumours of a secret marriage have been denied by both parties, as vehemently as the rumours of Olivia’s romance with Travolta.
Lee Kramer is a blond muscular Londoner with a stubborn chin and a footballer’s physique. The two met in the South of France in 1972. Kramer was a one time shoe importer. He is independently wealthy.
When Olivia talks of him, her voice becomes a mixture of tenderness and wariness “Why do i like him? He is a strong person. Once he makes up his mind there is no swaying him.”
“I also like his unpretentiousness and…” she tails of helplessly. “There was the chemistry thing between us.”
“Olivia trusts him,” says a close friend who asks not to be identified. “She met him at a time when she wasn’t especially well known, and she likes that idea. When you’re as famous as she is, as cynical as it sounds, there are very few people who aren’t after you for something.”
Yet suddenly last year, at a time when friends were convinced that the two, despite normal tiffs, would marry. Lee Kramer suddenly wasn’t living with Olivia any more. He bought his own house in a Malibu canyon several kilometres and hills away from her spread and although the two were still seeing each other, they weren’t living together.
The rumour then was that they key issue in their separation was the marriage question. It would seem that this is still the key issue.
Marriage is a commitment that Olivia says he still isn’t ready for, even though she says, “I feel the same about Lee as I always have. Before this happened, I didn’t realise how many couples i know include separations in their relationships.”
She admits quite frankly that the fairy princess, her role in the imaginings of so many men, is not always in reality such a prize to live with.
“I stifle easily,” she says. “My work is a big part of my life. It excites me. It takes up time and energy. When I come home I crave time to do just what I want. I need freedom to breathe and privacy.”
There is also a deep seated fear of marriage “What stops me becoming totally involved is fear of failing. I watched two marriages (her mother’s and six years later her sister’s) fall apart.”
“In some part of me I think I have made my decision not to take that risk. In fact I haven’t been seeing anyone.” Olivia says. “Mainly because I discovered recently how much I enjoy being alone.”
Olivia doesn’t think Lee Kramer sees other women. “But I do get jealous,” she said. “Everyone does.”