I'm Too old To Be Innocent
HOLLYWOOD Olivia Newton-John is getting tired of her goody-goody. sweet image. She has been compared to Doris Day, about whom someone once said, “I knew her before she was a virgin.”
Olivia now wants everyone to know that she isn’t just milk and white bread.
“They’ve called me milkshake,” she sighs. “And that’s fine, I guess. But I’m not a goody goody; I’m really not. In all the articles written about me, they always say something like ‘A four-letter word has never passed her lips or ‘She’s so nice it’s almost sickening. It makes me sound like I’m not human, and I am. I’ve been known to let a few fly now and then. And I’m not an Innocent person. I’m too old to be innocent.”
Newton-John, now 31, began her singing career at 15 as “Lovely Livvy” on The Happy Show, an afternoon TV variety programme for “mums and dads” in Melbourne.
She dropped out of school at 16 against her mother’s wishes and family tradition. (Her father was a college dean and her grand-father, Max Born, was a Nobel Prize winning nuclear physicist.)
She worked her way to England, where she laboured five years before landing a recording contract. In 1972, she arrived in America on the wings of her first hit record, If Not For You which was followed quickly by Let Me Be There and I Honestly Love You all honey-dripping, country-flavoured tunes delivered in a quiet, breathy style that caused one of the country’s most influential pop-music critics to describe her as “so often lacking in character that she makes The Carpenters sound like they have soul.”
Sexy scenes
But she was broadly appealing. Her records sold millions. She was named the world’s top-selling female vocalist in 1974, and has since be come, in the words of one of her colleagues, “a multimillion-dollar conglomerate that we all should have stock in”
Her first film, “Grease”, where she co starred with John Travolta, has grossed some US$190 million world wide. Two years later, she made another film, “Xanadu”, (now showing in Kuala Lumpuri) where she co-stars with Gene Kelly and Michael Beck. She maintains that she has some sexy scenes in this film, but the truth is that there really aren’t any.
But she still says her image in different now. She declares that she now is a single, mature, independent woman enjoying her newfound freedom.
She has broken up with her live-in boyfriend of seven years, Lee Kramer, who also is the producer of “Xanadu”. She started dating a fellow named Randal Kleiser, but abandoned him for a new heartthrob, dancer Matt Lattanzi who is only 19, and whom she met during the filming of “Xanadu”, where he is a background dancer.
But she frankly admits that her career comes before her love life, and that marriage is definitely out of the question. She is scared of marriage because she has seen so many divorces.
“My parents were divorced when I was 10, my sister was divorced, my aunts and uncles; there’s hardly a member of my family who hasn’t been through it. And I guess I’ve been affected by that. If you’ve never seen a relationship that lasts forever, then you tend not to believe it’s possible.”
“And I’ve not yet run into the man I believe I’ll spend the rest of my life with.” she adds.
She talked frankly about her current life style compared to her former, old-fashioned cutesy image.
“It’s a popular fantasy about my innocence, but it makes me sound as if I’m not human,” she says. “There’s innocence and there’s innocence I’m broad minded and I’m not innocent.”
“To be honest, I’ve never understood why people have always told me they’ve got a girl at home their mother, their sister or girlfriend like me. People change and grow as they get older. I’m a little more game to try new things then I used to be. I’m more adventurous. I do all the things that real women enjoy.”
Practical
“There are far more more parts to me than the girl-next-door Image. I am growing up and expanding. It’s not a sudden change of labels. It’s just that in retaining my own identity I am now a woman.”
“I’m really very happy at the present stage of my life.”
“I am quite level headed. I think of myself as practical and reasonably intelligent. I’ve never been to a psychiatrist. I hear about women leaping into bed with the nearest man or as a substitute turning to drinking. I’m not putting down sex or alcohol, but it’s just a cover-up for something lacking in the brain.”
“The most I drink is a little wine at dinner or after a show. I’ve never taken sleeping pills.”
She used to suffer from stage fright, and says “my biggest fear was forgetting my lyrics. I would write lyrics on the palm of my hand.”
She says she is over that now, but she did have one relapse last year, however, just before she was awarded the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth at ceremonies in Buckingham Palace.
“I got so nervous before the ceremony that I fell down the stairs in the royal toilet,” she laughs, slipping into an ever-so-British voice to do an impersonation of Princess Margaret greeting her with, “Ooh, I heard you fell down in the loo!”
But even if Olivia did use to suffer from stage fright, there’s one thing she’ll never have to worry about any more money!
For her percentage of “Grease” she has collected more than US$10 million to date.
So no matter what her image is, it doesn’t really matter. Olivia Newton-John can retire tomorrow and live the rest of her life in splendour in her big home in Malibu with all her cats, dogs and horses.
By Bertil Unger in Hollywood