I really like being in my 40s
Face To Face With Olivia
OLIVIA came to Australia to host Friday night’s black-tie gala, which was held at Darling Harbor, as the highlight of an inaugural celebrity festival.
Money raised from the $250 a head evening will aid the Spastic Centre of NSW and the Prince of Wales Children’s Hospital. Daughter Chloe (sporting a broken collar bone from a tumble off a double bunk is along on the trip. One of her drawings (“It’s her first rose,” mother said proudly) was prominently displayed in their suite at the Inter-Continental Hotel. The inscription reads: “I love you Mom.”
Family means the world to Olivia Newton-John: her parents, her brother, and husband Matt Lattanzi and their child, who is due to start kindergarten when she returns home.
Olivia and Chloe have just visited their farm on the North Coast-one from which Olivia made her contribution to the Australia Day 1988 telecast. “I was trying to sing a love song and Chloe was choking on an Icey Pole in the background,” she recalled. “I love it there. I become a slob, I wear old clothes and no make-up. It’s like the Garden of Eden -there are bananas and custard apples and avocados and papaya. For me, it’s essential for survival to get out amongst nature and away from the phone.”
“My husband and I go hiking sometimes for two or three days.”
Their home in Malibu is not without its fair share of flora and fauna. On the animal front there were, at last count: “Seven dogs - half of them are old-age pensioners, three horses and two are lame, six chickens and two don’t lay, two rabbits, two cats and two mice.”
Sounds like an intensive care ward. “Yeah, it does.”
The woman’s about to turn 43, and so help me, she doesn’t look much older than she did at 23. The unchanged hairdo helps, but it’s only a small part. Olivia agrees that it’s great to live in an age where you are as old or young as you feel.
“I really like being in my 40s,” she said, hugging Chloe.
More babies? “I’m so blessed with Chloe that if it happened it would be great but, if it doesn’t that’s fine. Anyway. I haven’t got long, have I?”
She’s not star-like, and that was a relief, after her publicist in Los Angeles had played the heavy on the phone with lines like: “Olivia doesn’t like to be kept waiting”.
In the flesh, ONJ is polite and friendly, while adroitly remaining a moving target on certain topics. Chloe, a golden child one of with her Italian father’s coloring, has brought about enormous changes in Olivia’s life which is a full-on commitment to doing her bit to save the environment. So vocal is she that the United Nations named her their first goodwill ambassador for their environment program. “It’s a great honor,” she says.
The future, she hopes, will be made up of family first; then music a new album is in the works and her environmental work (“equally”) and her business career, “which is very important to me.”
The bossy type from LA had faxed over a biography of Olivia, which refers to her as “a successful businesswoman.” Unfortunately that’s not a current description, but if Olivia has her way, it will be again.
The worst year of my life,
THE Australian production of Grease opens on September 26. “That’s my birthday,” laughed original Grease star Olivia Newton-John in Sydney last week. “Maybe I’ll bring them luck.” The hit was indeed lucky for her. back in 1978.
It remains the biggest-grossing movie musical ever, and the Olivia Newton-John Travolta recording is experiencing a worldwide revival. And speaking of luck, perhaps this 90s focus on her earlier work might bring the star some good fortune.
It would not go astray, in a terrible “The worst year of my life.” year she describes it.
Koala Blue, her chain of retail stores filed in the Bankruptcy Court for Chapter 11 protection against creditors earlier this year, much more traumatic was the death of a little girl, the daughter of my best friend in America -“she was like my own child”.
Colette Chuda was her name and she died from cancer.
“That’s real life: I suffered for my friends and for my daughter Chloe who was Colette’s best friend and for myself. Something like this really puts things in perspective.”
“Her parents are the most incredible people and they taught me so much. Even when they were spending all their time at the hospital, they would inquire how we were.”
A foundation has been set up in Colette’s name to raise money for research. Do you know that there’s an increase in the incidence of certain childhood diseases? “It could be to do with foods and the levels of pesticides”.
Olivia was upset as she spoke of that tragedy. but much more in control when referring to her business difficulties that made her front page news once again.
“Legally I can’t talk about it, because it’s going to court, but I’m hopeful it will be sorted -out in a couple of months and then the company will be operating again,” she said. “I’ve learnt a lot.” Has it made her smarter? “I don’t know,” she said. “Wiser, maybe.”
By Janise Beaumont
Photo caption: Olivia Newton John at the Inter Continental Hotel in Sydney. Picture: Michael Perini