OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN Biography - Musicians

 
 

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OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN

Name: Olivia Newton-John                                                         
Born: 26 September 1948 Cambridge, England                                       
                                                                                 
Olivia Newton-John (born 26 September 1948) is a Grammy Award-winning and         
Golden Globe-nominated English-born Australian pop singer, songwriter and         
actress. Her highly acclaimed vocal, musical, and acting talents have made her a 
globally recognized name. She is also a small business entrepreneur, as well as   
an avid activist in both environmental issues and breast cancer awareness.       
                                                                                 
Newton-John was born in Cambridge, England. Her parents were Brinley Newton-John 
and Irene Born (b. 25 May 1914). Irene was the eldest child of Max Born, a       
Lutheran German Nobel prize-winning physicist, who had fled from Germany with     
his wife in the 1930s in order to avoid persecution due to his and his wife's     
part Jewish heritage. Olivia's father, the Cardiff-born son of a publican, was   
an MI5 officer attached to the Enigma machine project at Bletchley Park, and the 
officer who took Rudolf Hess into custody when he parachuted into Scotland in     
May 1941. After World War II, he became a professor of German at the UNSW annex   
at Tighes Hill in Newcastle, Australia.                                           
                                                                                 
In 1954, aged five, Newton-John, her parents Brin and Irene, and her older       
siblings Hugh and Rona, emigrated to Melbourne, Australia, where her father       
had taken a job at Melbourne University as the Master of Ormond College.