Olivia's Mule Yule
By Patrice Fidgeon
Olivia Newton-John looks healthier and more beautiful than ever. She’s on location filming A Christmas Romance her first dramatic role since she beat the cancer that threatened her life. She has been working long hours on the telemovie, sharing in her eight year old daughter Chloe’s acting debut. “Trying to shoot a whole movie in just 20 days is exhausting,” she says in this exclusive interview.
But starring with her little girl makes all the toil seem worthwhile. Olivia plays Julia, a struggling 45- year-old, widowed mother of two young girls, who is desperate to find enough money to live on and is facing the prospect of a bleak Christmas. For the sake of her daughters, Julia does her best to pretend that everything is fine. The reality of the family’s woeful economic situation and shaky future hits home dramatically when a freak snow storm causes her handsome banker (Trapper John, M.D. star Gregory Harrison) to be stranded at her house.
Ignoring the showbusiness adage about never working with children or animals, Olivia has taken on the lot in this movie, starring with a stubborn but lovable donkey. And it has, she says, proved a challenge. “Trying to cope with the donkey, the fake snow and the wind machines, had its moments. The donkey often gets extremely nervous with all the activity going on,” she says. The other star of the film is seven- year-old Stephanie Sawyer, who was in The River Wild with Meryl Streep. “Chloe and Stephanie have formed a great friendship, so that made it a lot easier,” says Olivia. Chloe wants to act and sing like her mum, and dance like her dad, but Olivia says she will probably change her mind in the future, and that she would never push Chloe in any particular direction.
After filming A Christmas Romance, the whole family plan to have a few weeks in Canada before returning to Los Angeles for Christmas. It will be a double celebration for them, as it is also Olivia and Matt’s 10th wedding anniversary. “We had the most romantic wedding ever,” Olivia says, still blissfully happy and obviously in love. “It was family and close friends, and we had a string quartet playing while my Dad and my dog walked me down the aisle.”
Olivia doesn’t know what Matt has in store this time, but she says he caught her by surprise last year. “I had been working really hard and I came home and walked in the front door to see Matt and Chloe blowing whistles and throwing streamers. Matt had cooked a beautiful dinner and had decorated the whole house with streamers. It was absolutely great and just so totally unexpected. I tend to think men don’t remember these occasions, but he really surprised me.”