Life Stories - Olivia - Newton-John

As Grease celebrates its 40th anniversary, Olivia Newton-John reflects on her career and the power of positivity amid her ongoing cancer battle

Fourteen-year-old pupil Olivia Newton-John was not impressed. The vocal coach her mother had booked lessons with was the best in Melbourne, but he was trying to mould her into an opera singer when her passion was pop.

Determined to do it her way, she walked out of their sessions in 1962 – and within four years had recorded her first single. “I wouldn’t sing anything I hated. I [had] to like it, or I wouldn’t sing it,” she recounted later. And it paid off. Today, Newton-John has sold more than 100 million records and starred in one of the most successful film musicals of all time, Grease, which is celebrating its 40th birthday this year.

Newton-John was born on September 26, 1948 in Cambridge, England, the youngest of three children. The family emigrated to Australia when she was five, when her father, Brinley, or “Bryn”, was appointed dean of the University of Melbourne’s Ormond College. Given her family pedigree, it seemed inevitable that she would be wise beyond her years from a young age. Her grandfather was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist whose best friend was Albert Einstein; her father was a Second World War Enigma code breaker. But it was clear early on that her aptitude was for singing, not science – at 15 months old, she could recognise musical notes and imitate them; by two, she was pitch perfect.