Olivia Newton-John

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.

The British Australian chanteuse, best known for starring in the 1978 musical blockbuster, had stage IV metastatic breast cancer.

Though the musical was not a win with critics—Pauline Kael notably called it a “klutzburger”—fans were enthralled. Olivia Newton-John, the British Australian pop singer who dominated the pop charts of the 1970s and ’80s with mega hits “Hopelessly Devoted to You,” “Magic,” and “Physical”—and jolted audiences with her naif-to-naughty turn as Sandy in one of the top-grossing movie musicals of all time, Grease—died Monday at her ranch in Southern California, according to a message on her official Facebook page. With her fresh face traded for a dolled-up, sexually confident woman’s, Sandy brings John Travolta’s Danny—and America—to his knees. She won female vocalist of the year from the Country Music Association in 1974, beating out Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn—leading prominent artists George Jones and Tammy Wynette to form a separate association in protest. She snagged the longest-running hit of the 1980s with “Physical,” sold over 100 million albums, and throughout her career won four Grammys, landed 10 number one hits, and had more than 15 top 10 singles. “Olivia has been a symbol of triumphs and hope for over 30 years sharing her journey with breast cancer,” the official statement reads.

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.

The singer passed away peacefully at her ranch in Southern California. Read more at straitstimes.com.

You say “Sandy and Danny” and people instantly know what you’re talking about.” “My dearest Olivia, you made all of our lives so much better. “If you were a young man in the 70s..., if you remember that album cover with Olivia with that blue shirt on, with those big blue eyes staring at you,” Travolta recalled. 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. I love you so much,” wrote Travolta, in an Instagram post Monday signed “Your Danny, your John!” “Making it was fun but you never know with movies if audiences are going to go with it or not, even if you love it,” she said in a Forbes interview in 2018.