A chin wag with Olivia
She's the face for breast cancer fund-raising and a damn fine talent to boot. Andrew Georgiou chats with Olivia Newton John about wellness, self breast testing and Sandy.
TO: Firstly, a quick congratulations on your wedding - that's fantastic.
O: Thanks, thank you, I think so too.
TO: You're coming back to Sydney for your gala performance at the end
of the month which is going be a star studded fundraiser for your
wellness centre. Can you tell us a little about the night?
O: It's going to be very relaxed and there's going to be great line up
with Melinda Schneider and James Reign who walked the Great Wall of
China with me, so it'll be a reunion. In fact a lot of the people who
were on the China Wall Walk are coming, so it's going to be really a
lot of fun. [Also] Guy Sebastian, Paulini and Todd McKenney will be
there. I'm excited about the night. I want to be more a spectator than
anything. I'll do a few songs but I really wanted to raise funds for
the cancer and wellness centre that's very close to my heart and really
important to me.
TO: The centre will take a holistic approach to overall wellness not
just treating cancer specifically in the way that traditional medicine
does - is that correct?
O: The wellness centre will have holistic and complementary therapies;
the hospital of course will have all the most modern cancer treatments
and therapies that you can possibly have, but the wellness centre was
my dream so you can support the whole person while they're going
through cancer. So you won't just go in and be a body being treated
with chemotherapy, you can go to the Wellness Centre and have a cup of
tea and talk to someone, and have your feet rubbed and meditate. And we
hope to add some integrated therapies, massage and yoga and all these
kind of things to make the whole person feel stronger to go through it.
TO: You and your great pal Diane Heavin from Curves Fitness are
joining forces to launch a self-breast exam kit. Early detection pretty
much saved your life, so how does the kit actually work?
O: It's a very simple, non-polyurethane bag filled with a non-toxic
filler that makes everything appear larger when you're examining
yourself. If you have a grain of salt it'll be like a piece of sugar,
do you know what I mean? It makes everything appear 10 times larger
than it is. It's like your fingers are a magnifying glass. And so it
encourages women to become aware of their own breasts and if there are
any changes in them so that then you can go to the doctor and say "I
feel something" early on because I found my lump through my own self
detection, and even though some women wait to go to the doctor yearly
or something, it's much better, it makes more common sense...
TO: Will that be available worldwide eventually?
O: Yes, it's going to be worldwide. Curves are giving away a million of
them, which is quite incredible - across the world, in Australia and in
America and wherever they have their wonderful health centres. There
have been a lot of studies done to show that obesity adds to your
chances of getting cancer, so Curves are very involved in getting women
to exercise and eat properly and do regular self exams.
TO: We're all very excited in Time Out Towers about the 30th anniversary edition of Grease. Can't believe it's been that long.
O: Yeah, I know, me either.
TO: You were a very young-looking 30 year-old when you played Sandy,
but let's be honest, I've watched that film a thousand times, Cha Cha
DiGrigorio, who stole Danny from you, I'm sorry, she must have been 45
and still in high school at the time.
O: No,
Cha Cha, I saw her the other night and she looks exactly the same.
Since the movie she hasn't aged at all. I mean she just has a mature
face, and she was very young when she made the movie and she's still,
she's got a very chiselled kind of face.
TO: As we speak, somewhere in the world someone's playing Sandy in
leathers at this very moment, possibly in a gay bar, possibly on stage.
You pretty much made that film iconic. How does that feel?
O: I know, I think it's wonderful. I mean not many people are able to
be a part of something like that, so I've got Xanadu on Broadway,
Grease is on Broadway, so two of the characters that I created
initially are now in musicals which is really exciting, and John Farrah
who's an Aussie boy who wrote the music, all the big hits for Grease
and Xanadu has two of his shows on Broadway so it's lovely.
TO: One small favour before you go. I know you're a married woman now
so I approach this very carefully, but I would hope that you might tap
into the sexy side of Sandy and give me your very best version of "Tell
me about it... Stud"
O: Oh no!
TO: And I want the pause in between.
O: Laughs.
TO: I want to feel it.
O: I can't do that now. It's sort of inappropriate to me now. I don't
know if I could do them as well now. I think you should keep Sandy as
she was.
More on Olivia's breast self exam kit at Take Charge of Your Health and Liv
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