page_title: Olivia Newton-John
section_title: Grease
hierarchical_section_title: Olivia Newton-John / Career / Grease
caption_attribution_description: ID: DNST8301252 Service Depicted: John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, cropped from an image of them posing with the Navy's Blue Angels flight demonstration team in front of an A-4F Skyhawk aircraft parked on the apron. Location: SALINAS, CALIFORNIA (CA) UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (USA) Camera Operator: PH3 CURT FARGO Date Shot: 3 Oct 1982
context_page_description: Dame Olivia Newton-John AC DBE is a British-Australian singer, songwriter, actress, dancer, entrepreneur and activist. She is a four-time Grammy Award winner who has amassed five number-one and ten other top-ten Billboard Hot 100 singles, and two number-one Billboard 200 albums. Eleven of her singles and 14 of her albums have been certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America. She has sold an estimated 100 million records worldwide, making her one of the world's best-selling artists of all time. She starred in the 1978 musical film Grease, whose soundtrack remains one of the most successful in history and features two major hit duets with co-star John Travolta: "You're the One That I Want" – which ranks as one of the best-selling singles of all time – and "Summer Nights". Her signature solo recordings include "I Honestly Love You" and "Physical", plus "Let Me Be There", "Have You Never Been Mellow", "Hopelessly Devoted to You", "A Little More Love" and, from the 1980 film Xanadu, "Magic" and "Xanadu".
  Newton-John has been a long-time activist for environmental and animal rights issues.
context_section_description: Newton-John's career soared after she starred in the film adaptation of the Broadway musical Grease in 1978. She was offered the lead role of Sandy after meeting producer Allan Carr at a dinner party at Helen Reddy's home. Burned by her Toomorrow experience and concerned that she was too old to play a high school senior (she turned 29 during Grease's 1977 filming), Newton-John insisted on a screen test with the film's co-star, John Travolta. The film accommodated Newton-John's Australian accent by recasting her character from the play's original American Sandy Dumbrowski to Sandy Olsson, an Australian who holidays and then moves with her family to the US. Newton-John previewed some of the film's soundtrack during her second American network television special, Olivia, featuring guests ABBA and Andy Gibb. 
  Grease became the biggest box-office hit of 1978. The soundtrack album spent 12 non-consecutive weeks at No. 1 and yielded three Top 5 singles for Newton-John: the platinum "You're the One That I Want" (No. 1 Pop, No. 23 AC) with John Travolta, the gold "Hopelessly Devoted to You" (No. 3 Pop, No. 20 Country, No. 7 AC) and the gold "Summer Nights" (No. 5 Pop, No. 21 AC) with John Travolta and the film's cast. "Summer Nights" was from the original play written by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey, but the former two songs were written and composed by her long-time music producer, John Farrar, specifically for the film.
  Newton-John became the second woman (after Linda Ronstadt in 1977) to have two singles – "Hopelessly Devoted to You" and "Summer Nights" – in the Billboard top 5 simultaneously. Newton-John's performance earned her a People's Choice Award for Favorite Film Actress. She was nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Actress in a Musical and performed the Oscar-nominated "Hopelessly Devoted to You" at the 1979 Academy Awards.
  The film's popularity has endured through the years. It was re-released for its 20th anniversary in 1998 and ranked as the second highest-grossing film behind Titanic in its opening weekend. It was most recently re-released in July 2010 as a sing-along version in select American theatres. The soundtrack is one of the top ten best-selling soundtracks of all time.
  Newton-John contends: "I think the songs are timeless. They're fun and have great energy. The '50s-feel music has always been popular, and it's nostalgic for my generation, and then the young kids are rediscovering it every 10 years or so, it seems. People buying the album was a way for them to remember those feelings of watching the movie and feelings of that time period. I feel very grateful to be a part of this movie that's still loved so much."
caption: Newton-John appearing with John Travolta in 1982
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