Olivia Newton-John's sunny personality helped make her a star in the seventies and eighties.
But as the years have passed, she's endured one tragedy after another.
Let's take a closer look at her story.
Vanishing boyfriend
Unlike her character in Grease, Newton-John had a hard time finding that special someone
to be as "Hopelessly Devoted" to her as Danny Zuko was to Sandy.
In 1995, for example, she and her husband of 10 years, actor Matt Lattanzi, divorced
amid rumors that he was unfaithful.
Then her subsequent long-term boyfriend, cameraman Patrick McDermott, literally disappeared.
McDermott and Newton-John dated for nine years before he vanished in 2005 after embarking
on a fishing trip in San Pedro, California.
He was reported missing roughly a week later when he failed to show up to a family event.
He was never seen or heard from again.
Several years later, though, he was rumored to have been spotted in Mexico, allegedly
having secretly fled to the country to escape a large amount of debt.
The United States Coast Guard's official determination was that McDermott was lost at sea during
that fateful voyage, but the rumors forced Newton-John to relive the whole ordeal.
It hasn't been easy.
She told Australian Women's Weekly,
"I don't think I will ever really be at peace with it."
"Those are the things in life you have to accept."
Daughter's struggles
Newton-John's daughter, Chloe Rose Lattanzi, suffered from an eating disorder as a teenager.
At one point, she weighed only 90 pounds at 5 foot 6 inches tall.
She spoke about her struggles in a 2013 interview with Entertainment Tonight, in which she noted,
"It's just really sad because I was just a little girl, and now I look at it and I look
like a walking skeleton."
Lattanzi believes that the anxiety of being a celebrity's child fueled her anorexia and
substance abuse.
She told the Daily Mail in 2013,
"Fame totally messes you up.
I don't blame my mother for my problems, but I would never want to be famous or raise a
child of my own around the cult of celebrity.
It ruins lives."
In October 2015, Lattanzi credited her fiancé, martial artist James Driskill, with being
a big help as she made a full recovery.
"It seems like you've been through quite a life's journey.
Where are you at today?"
"I’m really happy.
I’m stable and I'm in a loving relationship."
Cancer comes calling
1992 was a particularly painful year for Olivia Newton-John.
Her 5-year-old goddaughter and her father both died from cancer that year.
And just two weeks after her dad's passing, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
She subsequently underwent a partial mastectomy, breast reconstruction, and chemotherapy and
became cancer-free for more than 20 years.
She went on to found the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness and Research Centre in Australia.
Alas, cancer was not done with her family.
In May 2013, her older sister lost her battle with brain cancer, on their late mother's
birthday, no less.
Reflecting on her life's challenges in 2000, Newton-John told People Magazine,
"I'm a much stronger person than I realized.
Sometimes you need to be confronted with things before you really know your potential."
Cancer's return
In May 2017, Newton-John revealed that she was again diagnosed with breast cancer and
that this time it had spread to her lower back.
Nevertheless, she felt positive that she would win her latest battle with cancer and would
soon be back to her long-lived business of entertaining the masses.
But her path to a clean bill of health has not been an easy one.
In August 2019, Newton-John revealed that she was secretly admitted to her own cancer
center the year before, when her stage 4 breast cancer spread to the sacrum bone in her spine.
She was hospitalized for three weeks, sneaking around wearing a beanie and a face mask.
She called it her "scariest" experience with the disease because it had affected her bones,
and she admitted that she even had to learn to walk again.
"When you're given a cancer diagnosis or a scary illness diagnosis, you're suddenly given
a possibility of a time limit."
"So every day is a gift now, yeah, particularly now."
A death in her house
What started out as a dream home for Newton-John and her second husband, natural health businessman
John Easterling, eventually became a house of horrors.
The couple purchased a luxurious waterside mansion in Florida's Jupiter Inlet County
in 2009, and after owning it for four years, they decided to put it on the market.
They hired a contractor to oversee extensive renovations that would increase the value
of the sale.
But the man they hired for the work, Christopher Pariseleti, reportedly took his own life by
gunshot wound in one of the property's bedrooms while Newton-John and Easterling were away.
The couple then had so much trouble selling the home that they even brought in an exorcist
to cleanse it of any lingering spirits.
In 2015, the $5.5 million listing was taken off the market.
In January 2016, the Miami Herald reported that it was finally sold to a Swedish advertising
executive for $5 million cash.
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide
Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).