Why I Dropped Out
Where do you go after Grease? After you’ve been in a blockbuster movie-one of the biggest money-makers of all time-playing the role of a 17-year-old ingenue, what do you do next?
At the age of 30, Olivia Newton-John has had fantastic success as the star of a teen-age spectacular. Now the question is, Is there life after high school?
Olivia’s in no rush to answer. She’s sipping a cup of tea, and in the late-afternoon light her clear skin has a burnished glow and her blond hair swings shoulder-length and silky.
She’s dressed in terry-cloth slacks and shirt of berry red; and although she’s often been described as “innocent and wholesome,” her real look is more sophisticated and sleek. “Look at me, I’m Sandra Dee,” somebody sang about her in the movie. But in the real world she’s more Grace Kelly, with the polite reserve of a lady who doesn’t ruffle easily.
“When a new part comes along that’s right for me, I’ll know it,” she says quietly. “I’m very lucky that I have the luxury of being able to do only what I want. If you have to wait two or three years, you have to wait. Maybe another movie won’t come along. But I’ll still know I was in one of the biggest films of all time”.
Life after Grease was no let down for Olivia. She played Las Vegas (her co-star and friend John Travolta hopped up on stage one night to join her for a number that brought the house down), participated in Grease publicity and made a globe-hopping concert tour.
But at some point it all became too much, even for a workaholic like Olivia. “I don’t adjust to travel well - it exhausts me,” Olivia says, and that’s a fine state of affairs for someone who’s spent much of her career on the road in round-the-world concerts. “I wanted time to catch my breath,” she says. “And it’s not until you stop that you realize how tired you really are.” She stopped all right: In the spring of this year, a rundown Olivia was hospitalized for hepatitis.
But now she’s restored to health (“I wasn’t yellow or anything”), and is unconcerned about what the professional future will bring.
One thing that’s had a calming effect is the $10 million she’s reported to have made so far from her percentage of Grease’s profits, which allows her to take her time before rushing into any new projects.
“I decided I wanted to drop out for a while,” Olivia says. “And I’m loving it. I have time now to book dance classes in advance and actually go to them, to see my friends, to just relax and take it easy. It’s wonderful.”
Another aspect of Olivia’s life that seems in fine shape is her relationship with a 27-year-old Englishman named Lee Kramer. Kramer was a shoe importer who met Olivia six years ago when both were vacationing in southern France. Kramer wangled his way on to Olivia’s flight back home; shortly thereafter he switched from shoe biz to show biz and became not only the man in Olivia’s life but her business manager as well.
He and Olivia have lived together ever since except for a period of several months when they separated both personally and professionally, amid rumors that John Travolta had come between them (he didn’t; John and Olivia were then and still are good friends who continue to keep in touch). Today Olivia and Lee live together on five acres in Malibu.
“When the time is right to marry. I’ll know it,” she says. “Maybe it sounds silly to say, but I want to be sure of what I’m doing.”
Her caution may come from the breakup of her own parents marriage when Olivia was 11. Her mother and father were divorced in Australia at a time when divorce meant scandal, and young Olivia was left feeling different and alone.
“For me, marriage is a lifetime commitment,” she says. “People change and grow as they get older, and you want to make sure that you change and grow together. There’s no need to rush into anything I have time to decide.”
What about children? “I couldn’t have a family without being married. Someday, maybe, I’d like to have children. But there’s time for all that, too.” Then her voice becomes firmer. “But I don’t want to talk about my personal life,” she says. “I’d rather talk about other things.”
Something she does love to talk about is animals, and her concern for them is genuine. On a global scale, she threatened to cancel a concert tour of Japan unless Japanese fishermen stopped their slaughter of dolphins inadvertently caught up in their tuna nets.
But closer to home are the animals in residence at Olivia’s own house in California. The current count is 11 dogs including two with coyote ancestry who were found whimpering in a hollow, and one who’s about to become a mother (“then we’ll have, what? eighteen dogs!”). There’s one cat - and Olivia says she’s heading for the pound soon to get another one. And there are five horses Olivia rides almost every day.
She lavishes a lot of time and attention on the animals, and has a full-time keeper to care for them (“they have a great life if I could have another life as anything. I’d come back as one of my dogs”).
Olivia’s said that if she hadn’t been a singer, she’d have been a veterinarian - but she confesses that this is probably wishful thinking.
“The truth is that I wasn’t very good in math in school - so I really probably wouldn’t have been able to get through all those years of medical school. But I would have been a vet’s assistant it’s something that I’d still love, for that matter”
It’s hard to believe she couldn’t have mastered math if she’d set her mind to it. Her grandfather was Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Born, and her father was a university professor - in fact, Olivia grew up on the grounds of the University of Melbourne. But she herself dropped out of high school at the age of 16 and went to London to start a career in music. She later moved on to the United States and became an all-American sweetheart, with hit records like “I Honestly Love You” and “Have You Never Been Mellow,” and a series of gold records and Grammy awards. Although she’s still an Aussie at heart. she loves America and has no plans to settle anywhere else.
What about the plans she does have? She’d like to write more songs of her own - maybe even all of them for her next album. And if that special movie part comes along, she’ll take it.
“But it doesn’t worry me,” she says. “If it all suddenly ended no more hit records, no more big movies - I’d go off to the farm I dream about having, one with a picket fence. But I’d still have my feet on the ground. I’m calmer about everything now, things don’t worry me as much as they used to. If nothing else happens from this point on. I’d still feel that I’d done enough. Everything that happens from now on for me is a bonus.”
By Mary Ann Groark