Olivia Newton-John

English-Australian singer, songwriter and actress Olivia Newton-John has died at age 73. She was one of the the biggest pop stars in the 1970's and early ...

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The entertainer began performing as a child and became a global superstar after moving to the United States.

There was no one else “in the universe” who could play Sandy, he said of Newton-John, who turned 29 during the making of Grease and later revealed she had to be convinced by Travolta to take up the role after self-doubts that she was too old to play a teenager. Newton-John is best known for starring in the 1978 musical “Grease” alongside John Travolta as the girl-next-door Sandy, who trades her ankle-length skirt and prim and proper hair for skin-tight black pants and a perm. The British-born and Australian-raised star dedicated a number of albums and concerts to raise funds for research and early detection of the disease, including the construction of a health centre named after her in her adopted home Melbourne.

The Grammy award-winning singer found enduring fame in the film Grease.

She also spent more of her time as an advocate of humanitarian and health issues. The album was dedicated to her then boyfriend, Matt Lattanzi, whom she married in 1984. There was a further blow when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. The character of Sandy was recast as an expat Australian to accommodate Newton-John's accent. The eponymous single won her a Grammy for Best Female Country Vocalist. The title track held the Billboard number one spot for 10 weeks. It was her first US Top 10 album since 1975. In May 2017 it was announced that her breast cancer had returned and spread to her back resulting in a cancellation of a planned tour in the US and Canada. She publicly campaigned for the legalisation of medicinal cannabis to ease the pain. It was a catalyst for change in both her image and her musical direction. Instead, she turned to music. Her rendition of Anyone Who Had a Heart won her the top prize in another talent show, which included a trip to the UK. She was initially reluctant to leave Australia, but her mother saw it as a chance to build her daughter's career and flew with her to London in 1966. In 1954 her father took up a post as a professor of German at the University of Melbourne and the family moved to Australia.

Singer Olivia Newton-John, who soared to the top of the world's pop music charts in the 1970s and 1980s, died on Monday at age 73.

“I’m grateful for ‘Grease,'” she told the Detroit News in 2016. Its sex-infused lyrics (“there’s nothing left to talk about unless it’s horizontally, let’s get physical”) eroded her good-girl image and led some radio stations to ban it. In the end they reconcile as their roles reverse, with Danny cleaning up his act and Sandy making a striking appearance in a tight black leather outfit. She also was concerned about doing an American accent, so the part was rewritten to make Sandy an Australian. Twenty-five years earlier Newton-John had undergone a partial mastectomy and gone on to establish a cancer treatment-research facility in Australia. The unlikely success of an Australian in American country music bothered many Nashville purists.

Pop star best known for her role in the film musical devoted her later life to activism in support of cancer research.

A brief career dip followed the album’s initial acclaim, before Newton-John represented the UK in the 1974 Eurovision song contest; her song, Long Live Love, finished equal fourth behind Abba’s winning Waterloo. Then followed a period of singing and recording country music, before she was cast in Grease. Born in Cambridge, England, in 1948, Newton-John and her family emigrated to Melbourne, Australia, when she was six. The role was also altered to accommodate her Australian accent. We will see you down the road and we will all be together again. She also revealed she’d had a second cancer diagnosis in 2013 but had kept it quiet. The news was confirmed by her husband.

British-born Australian musician and actress Olivia Newton-John performs onstage, Chicago, Illinois, August 29, 1982. Paul Natkin | Archive Photos | Getty ...

"(At 29 years old) she wasn't sure she would look the part of a 17-year-old and wanted to make sure she and John looked like they could be contemporaries," Kleiser said. "Olivia Newton-John was our first choice for the part of Sandy, but she had a few concerns," Kleiser recalled by email. She notched her biggest hit with the song "Physical" in November 1981. But it became an even more personal cause a year later, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer for the first time. Actually, it was the entire industry's biggest hit of that decade, according to a Billboard ranking, and held its top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for 10 consecutive weeks. After her father took a job at a college in Australia, the family moved to Melbourne when Newton-John was 5. In the late '70s and early '80s, Newton-John was one of the most recognizable celebrities in the world. But it would be as a solo artist, starting in 1966, that Newton-John would hit her true potential. You have to make that decision," she told the "TODAY" show in March 2019. She broke through on this side of the Pacific with her third solo album, "Let Me Be There," in 1973, with the title track earning the singer her first Grammy Award, for best female country performance. But from an early age, it seemed she was not destined to follow into the family business of academia. "Olivia has been a symbol of triumphs and hope for over 30 years sharing her journey with breast cancer.