August 10, 2022
Frankie Stevens remembers Olivia Newton-John as a good person on and off-stage
Māori singer Frankie Stevens says the late Olivia Newton-John was a wonderful person who was as nice off stage as she was on screen.
The Grease star died on Monday of breast cancer aged 73.
The pair first worked together when they were teamed up with Lynsey de Paul to represent Great Britain at the 1972 Tokyo Song Festival.
He says while she was born in Britain, she loved being Australian, where the family moved in 1974.
“She never considered herself a great singer but she was really intelligent, popular and she knew what was right and what worked for her and she was strong on that. She believed in herself as a performer, as a singer. She was exactly as she seemed on television, as people saw her and never met her but thought she was a good person. She was exactly that,” Stevens says.
Frankie Stevens says after her breast cancer diagnosis 30 years ago Olivia Newton-John confronted it face-on and used her stardom to promote cancer detection and research.