Generosity. Warmth. Openness: Why the loss of Olivia Newton-John has hit us so hard.

Listen to this story being read by Mia Freedman, here. 

Olivia Newton-John has died, aged 73, and the news is still sinking in.

When someone as famous as Olivia dies, it’s a very specific feeling. It’s a type of sadness but it’s also a feeling of nostalgia as we’re instantly transported to all the times in our life that intersected with them.

This morning, as I turned on my phone and read message after message in my group chats with the single word “Olivia”, I thought immediately about Grease.

I thought about being seven years old in 1978 and going to the movies for the first time in my life to see a ‘grown-up’ film and the lifelong effect it had on me.

It’s hard to overstate how iconic that film would become or how it would come to define the lives of its stars, Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta.

The film was a bit nuts, really. Certainly the casting was. 

A group of actors in their twenties and thirties, playing high school students. Olivia was 28, John was 23 (Stockard Channing, who played Rizzo, was 33!) and Olivia’s character was inexplicably Australian because she told the director she couldn’t do a plausible American accent. 

“Oh well, we’ll just make Sandy Australian then,” he said. 

And they did.

Olivia was a pop star then, widely successful all over the world. And Hollywood wanted to try to harness that fame to make movies.

That’s how she came to star in one of the most iconic films, in the most iconic roles of all time.

Did you have Grease pants? Most girls who grew up in the 70s and 80s did. 

The cultural impact of that transformational final scene when Sandy went from virgin to vixen lodged itself deeply in the psyche of every young woman and girl who saw it.

It wasn’t a new trope - frumpy prude transforms into hot babe  - but it became definitive. The message was terrible of course.

Dress sexy, start smoking (or pretend to) and that’s how you get the hot, popular guy. Because what man would want a nerdy girl?

It was the personification of the virgin/whore dichotomy of female archetypes and I knew which one I wanted to be.

Like so many Gen Xers, I couldn’t wait to share Grease with my children. They adored it. 

It’s a film that transcends generations and has mostly aged well. Except for the messages about bullying, smoking, sexual harassment, slut-shaming and cat-calling being cool. And the cast isn’t exactly diverse.

But it was a movie of its time (the 70s) made about a time even further back in history - the 50s. 

The #metoo movement was 60 years in the future and I don’t think we can cancel Danny Zuko retrospectively for that dick move he pulled at the drive-in. 

But that scene did provide me with some great opportunities to discuss consent with my bemused children who just wanted to sing the songs and dance on top of a car.

As hard as Hollywood tried to make Olivia into an actress - Xanadu was a fabulously bonkers film where she was on rollerskates for most of it - it was Grease who made her a star and it was the enduring legacy of that film and that character over the next 40 years, that kept her one.

She released albums, launched businesses, became an activist for environmental and animal rights causes and experienced a huge amount of tragedy and some scandal.

Her beloved sister Rona died - after having married the actor who played Kenickie in Grease. 

Her goddaughter died when she was just six years old. She had many miscarriages after giving birth to her daughter Chloe with her husband Matt Lattanzi when she was in her late 30s. She thought about adoption and was planning to go to Romania but her plans fell through and her marriage ended.

Her long-term partner, Patrick McDermott, disappeared and was found to have tried to fake his own death in 2005. She had been dating him on and off for nine years. The tabloids went ballistic. The heartbreak and betrayal must have been intense.

And yet, when you think of Olivia Newton-John, you never ever think of scandal or tragedy. Or sadness.

You think about Grease and Sandy and 'Let’s Get Physical' and a time when celebrities could still become iconic from their work and not their personal lives.

It was a simpler time, one not afforded to female pop stars or actors of this generation.

When I met Olivia in person in 2018, I was taken aback by her openness and her charisma. This isn’t always the case with celebrities, let alone icons. In fact, it’s usually the opposite.

Someone that famous doesn’t need to do the media rounds. 

We all would have come to her for interviews when she was in Australia, promoting her book. But she arrived in the Mamamia office without fuss and without an entourage. 

She was slight and clearly fragile - her cancer had returned for the third time and she told me she was eschewing medical treatment and instead using natural remedies - but she had energy. And warmth. So much warmth.

She laughed easily and a lot. 

Throaty cackles that lit up her face and made you break into a huge smile. She answered every one of my questions about Grease and John Travolta as though it was the first time she’d been asked them and gave thoughtful, candid answers.

I never felt that she was bored or jaded or impatient.

This is what I remember: when the interview was over, she didn’t rush off even though she must have been exhausted. 

She gave us what famous people rarely have to spare: her time. She posed for photos with everyone and graciously received our gushes about Grease and how much we loved her.

Mia Freedman and Olivia Newton-John in 2018. Image: Supplied.

The sadness I felt today when I heard the news she had died was layered. 

I felt sad for her family and friends and all the people who knew and loved her who she loved back. I imagine she was pretty fierce with her love.

But there was also a sadness for a time that has passed. A feeling of mortality when your heroes and icons begin to die. 

Because when they really touched you - like Olivia did for so many millions of us - it can feel like they take a tiny piece of you with them, the piece of our heart they collided with all those times we watched their movies or sang along to their songs.

Vale Olivia. Go well. We remain hopelessly devoted to you.

Listen to Mia Freedman's No Filter interview with Olivia Newton-John here.

Feature Image: Supplied.