How Olivia Newton-John almost shirked her greatest role
Even though she made her acting debut prior to becoming a well-known singer, Olivia Newton-John was hesitant to accept the role that would ultimately secure her a place in cinema history, and it had nothing to do with her preference for the stage over the silver screen.
That being said, her first two feature film appearances in What Happens Down Under and Toomorrow – both of which predated the release of her 1971 debut studio album If Not for You – were musicals where she played a character called Olivia, so it’s not as if she was stretching herself on that front. However, by the time Grease hit cinemas in 1978, having another seven records under her belt and only one small part in a made-for-TV movie made it clear where her priorities lay.
Such is the palpable chemistry generated opposite John Travolta as Sandy Olsson and Danny Zuko in the all-singing and all-dancing classic. It’s impossible to imagine anybody else in the roles. The sequel tried by recruiting Maxwell Caulfield and Michelle Pfeiffer as its two leads, but the fact it earned $350million less at the box office underlined how the general public felt.
It was Travolta who pushed hard for Newton-John to be Sandy after she initially captured the attention of producer Allan Carr, but she wasn’t so sure. As casting director Joel Thurm told Fox News, there was a great deal of hesitation on her part: “We talked about it, and I said, ‘It’s a great idea.’ But my problem was to make Olivia work. Olivia did not want to do it initially. She didn’t leap at this opportunity.”
Her misgivings stemmed from her previous – albeit limited – acting experience, which saw Newton-John request a screen test to prove to herself and others that simply being offered the part out of the gate was the right move: “We all thought she was perfect, that she was Sandy. So, she said, ‘All right, well, in that case, I’d like a screen test’,” Thurm continued. “That is the first and only time I’ve ever heard of an actor or actress asking for a screen test.”
Her status as an internationally renowned and independently wealthy star in her own right also allowed Newton-John to set demands that not many relatively unproven on-camera performers could make. She took a lesser salary in exchange for sharing equal billing with Travolta and was given input into the script, which necessitated extensive rewrites and the changing of Sandy’s backstory to being of Australian origin so she wouldn’t have to master an American accent.
As she told People at the time, “I didn’t want to go into something I couldn’t handle or have something to say about.” When it came to Sandy herself, Newton-John “kept trying to give her a little strength.” It’s impossible to imagine Grease without her, but she only did it if her requests were met, which is fair enough considering her star power.