OPINION | Olivia Newton-John's life was always more than it seemed

This was the life and career of Olivia Newton-John 2:53

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(CNN) --

The first time I saw Olivia Newton-John out of character I was pretty disappointed.

An inauspicious start to a eulogy, perhaps, but let me explain: It was 1998 and I was 10 years old.

The cast of "Grease" had gathered for a special tribute 20 years after the film's original release, and I had seen Newton-John, who passed away this week at age 73, on TV on her publicity tour. .

To my horror, she was no longer a teenager wearing an A-line skirt (I also had no idea she was 28 when the movie was shot), and there was no Alice headband in her hair.

Luckily for everyone, she was so charming in her interview that I immediately forgave her for having aged in the decades since her starring role as Sandy Olsson.

Her smile was still dazzling, her chemistry with co-star John Travolta was still enviably electric, and judging by her nonchalance, her real life seemed just as magical as that of her most famous character. her.

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As I discovered when my hobby evolved beyond my initial obsession with "Grease," it didn't.

The high points of Newton-John's life were more wonderful than most, but they were accompanied by moments of great difficulty.

After her initial diagnosis of breast cancer in 1992, she lived with the disease for the rest of her life, becoming so beloved for her work promoting the disease, for his most memorable role.

She became a national treasure in Australia, where her work was instrumental in supporting research and treatment at the Melbourne cancer center that bears her name.

Newton-John made such an impact as an artist and advocate that much of the rest of her remarkable and sometimes bizarre story is comparatively sidelined.

Even selective review reveals a woman endowed with a chameleon-like ability to reinvent herself, and underscores the futility of any attempt to pigeonhole a person's experience in terms of her most visible triumphs or misfortunes.

For starters, the premiere of "Grease" was far from the only memorable event in Newton-John's world in 1978. The year his fame went stratospheric, a moment anyone is expected to make the most of, too. canceled a concert tour of Japan in protest at the killing of dolphins by the country's fishermen.

His tenderness for the creatures even spilled over into his music: His 1981 song "The Promise (the Dolphin Song)" was inspired by the dolphins he met in Hawaii.

"It was weird," he told People in 1982. "The morning after I was in the pools, I woke up and the lyrics and the melody were in my head. I think it was a gift from them."

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In many ways, his music career was more eclectic and more illustrious than a standard "Grease" fan might appreciate.

We all know his 1981 smash hit, "Physical" (by the way, the video's theme, "let's get these obese women in shape as a smokescreen for our sexy song," makes you feel like you haven't aged well when you see it again), but did you know that she won a Grammy for Best Female Country Vocal Performance in 1974 for "Let Me Be There"?

Her initial success on the country scene was met with strong opposition from traditionalists, keen to protect the genre from any supposed contamination by pop artists.

However, her voice became so respected that it won Dolly Parton the title of Female Vocalist of the Year at the 1974 Country Music Association Awards, an accolade not yet won by any other non-American.

As if determined to clear horizons in every conceivable direction, she also competed in the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest with her song "Love Live Love" where she finished in fourth place, behind ABBA with "Waterloo". .

The romantic themes of Newton-John's greatest hits, Grease's "Hopelessly Devoted To You" is probably the song most associated with her, belie the sometimes ruthless reality of her love life.

Her fiancé Bruce Welch attempted suicide after her breakup in 1972, which came amid rumors that she was dating someone else.

She divorced her first husband, actor Matt Lattanzi, in 1995 after 11 years of marriage, and her next major partner, on-and-off boyfriend Patrick McDermott, a cameraman, mysteriously disappeared in 2005. He was last seen aboard a fishing boat off the California coast, and his sudden disappearance is an unsolved mystery.

Newton-John was understandably "frantically worried" at the time,

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Newton-John married John Easterling, the founder of the Amazon herb company, in 2008, and the couple remained together for the rest of their lives.

Her ability to bounce back seemed to apply to any disaster or embarrassment, from her failed attempt to start a sportswear company in the 1980s to her 1980 musical "Xanadu," a flop that Variety declared "stupendously bad."

The most charming example is probably her latest "Glee" cameos, one of which included an absurd (and surprisingly less offensive) reimagining of the "Physical" video.

Not surprisingly, given his open-minded approach to life in general, Newton-John wholeheartedly rejected the tired "battle" narrative so often used to describe cancer.

In a 2020 interview, three years after being told that her disease had returned, had metastasized and spread to her bones, she kept insisting that she felt "lucky."

"I choose not to see it as a fight either because I don't like war. I don't like to fight, wherever it is, whether it's on the outside or in a real war inside my body," he explained.

Ultimately, he approached his illness like everything else: as a process of evolution.

Pigeonholing his illness, or her career, or their romances, or anything else, into a tidy win-or-lose narrative would only tone down the nuances that distinguish real life from a teen movie musical.

For all the lightness that emanated from Newton-John, the path he traveled was much more complicated than many of the tributes paid to him might suggest.

In remembering her, we should remember the uncomfortable and unexpected things, as well as the noble and inspiring ones.

They often reveal the true value of a person.

Celebrity deathsOlivia Newton-John