How Olivia Newton-John won her Grease role and became a worldwide hit

Olivia Newton-John nearly didn’t star in Grease - it was a chance meeting at a dinner party that changed the Aussie’s life forever.

No one could have predicted just how prophetic the opening scene of Grease would prove.

Olivia Newton-John’s Sandy is running down the beach and kissing John Travolta’s Danny.

“I’m going back to Australia and I might never see you again,” Sandy says. “Danny, is the end?,”

“Of course not, it’s only the beginning,” Danny replies.

And how right he was. Olivia Newton-John was always going to be best remembered as Sandy Olsson. Released in June 1978, the film was an instant hit and quickly became the highest-grossing screen musical of the time. Newton-John’s performance of Hopelessly Devoted To You was nominated for an Oscar, while the final scenes of her in teased blonde curls, skin-tight black spandex breathing: “Tell me about it, stud,” before stamping out her cigarette with a red high heel and launching into You’re The One That I Want is forever stamped into popular imagination.

A Grease scene with John Travolta Picture: Alamy

But the role that would come to define Newton-John’s acting career was very nearly not hers – Susan Dey, Carrie Fisher and Marie Osmond were considered. Osmond was the frontrunner but dropped out in protest over Grease’s ending.

It was testament to the quiet strength of Newton-John that the role not only became hers, but that it was altered and rewritten quite substantially from the off-Broadway musical on which the movie was based.

Xandau became a cult classic for Newton-John.

It all started at a 1977 dinner party at the home of singer Helen Reddy. The I Am Woman singer introduced Newton-John to Allan Carr, a Hollywood film producer.

Carr had the movie rights for Grease and thought Newton-John might be a perfect Sandy.

Rather than be flattered, Newton-John was initially reluctant to commit because her musical career was going well and her film debut, Toomorrow, had tanked and she didn’t want to make another flop. Not to mention she was seven years older than Travolta – and felt at 29 she was pretty old to be playing a teenager.

Then there was her accent. Despite years of working in the US, she hadn’t quite mastered the accent, still retaining a hint of Aussie twang.

Instead, the producers tweaked the role of Sandy. They changed her name and made her an Aussie who had holidayed, and then moved, to the US with her family. They even agreed to her demands for a screen test — so she could see for herself if she was compatible with Travolta – and an equal billing with her male co-star.

John Travolta kisses Olivia Newton-John in a scene from the film 'Two Of A Kind'.

“I worried that at 29 I was too old to play a high school girl,” Newton-John said in a 2017 interview. “Everything about making the film was fun, but if I had to pick a favourite moment, it was the transformation from what I call Sandy 1 to Sandy 2. I got to play a different character and wear different clothes, and when I put on that tight black outfit to sing You’re the One That I Want, I got a very different reaction from the guys on the set.”

The subsequent massive success of Grease had Newton-John – and the industry – on the lookout for a follow-up film project. But she never again quite reached that dizzy height of success on screen.

The interesting fantasy musical 1980s Xanadu followed. It prove a little mortifying for both Newton-John and her co-star Gene Kelly in his final screen role. Although it has since become a cult classic.

It did give her five more hits, including the title song and Magic. It also introduced her to the man who became her first husband – Matt Lattanzi.

Travolta and Newton-John reunited for Two of a Kind in 1983, which sadly did not revive the old Grease magic, attracting some horrendous reviews.

Newton-John’s last role was in The Very Excellent Mr. Dundee. Photo: Transmission Films

Dedicated fans argue she made Christmas-movie history with her starring role in the sappily sentimental 1990 TV movie A Mom for Christmas. A lonely girl, whose mother died when she was little, is moping around a department store one festive season and wishes that a pretty mannequin would come to life and be her mother. This, of course, is Newton-John, who goes home with her.

After this, Newton-John’s roles are an interesting, eclectic mix. She had a supporting part in the groundbreaking AIDS drama It’s My Party (1996), played a hockey mom in Score: A Hockey Musical (2010) and even had a cameo in Sharknado 5: Global Swarming (2017). Critics say that her best later work, which showed that she did have the acting chops to go with the music, was her hilarious turn as gay country singer Bitsy Mae Harling in Del Shores’s black comedy Sordid Lives (2000) and the subsequent TV series spin-off, belting out bittersweet numbers in a downtrodden bar.

Her last role was as herself in 2020s The Very Excellent Mr. Dundee – Paul Hogan’s movie on Prime Video where he attempts to make sense of his life and Hollywood’s attempt to reboot the series he made famous.

She always stayed true to herself and kept claim on her audience’s hearts to the end.