From the moment she appeared in the opening scene of Grease, running down the beach and kissing John Travolta while silhouetted by the setting sun, 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 its era. Newton-John’s performance of “Hopelessly Devoted To You” was nominated for an Oscar, while the image of her in blonde curls 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” seared itself into the popular imagination. You couldn’t want for a more defining vision of adolescent sexual awakening and teenage rebellion.
Yet there was much more to Newton-John, who has died from breast cancer at the age of 73, than her most iconic role. She was born in Cambridge on 26 September 1948. Her father Bryn Newton-John was an MI5 officer who worked on the Enigma project at Bletchley Park and took Nazi deputy Führer Rudolf Hess into custody during the Second World War. Her mother, Irene, was the daughter of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Born, who fled to Britain to escape the Nazi regime.
