After a battle with Stage 4 breast cancer, ‘Grease’ star Olivia Newton-John EXCLUSIVELY tells HollywoodLife how she’s feeling these days and shares exciting details about the work of her new foundation.
Olivia Newton-John hasn’t undergone radiation in “a couple of years” and hasn’t had a scan for cancer “for a long time,” which the 72-year-old actress happily revealed in an EXCLUSIVE interview with HollywoodLife! While the leading lady from Grease has emerged from her third round of cancer (which had returned in May of 2017), the Australian icon is still investing her time into finding “kinder therapies” for those still battling the disease with her new Olivia Newton John Foundation that launched during Breast Cancer Awareness Month. We caught up with Olivia, who opened up about how she’s feeling after her most recent fight against cancer and the work her organization is doing.
“I think I’m extremely lucky. I’m very lucky that I’m well. I don’t take that for granted at all,” Olivia told HollywoodLife during a video interview on Oct. 13. She also told us that feels “great” now, despite experiencing “some pain” in her feet. “I have some neuropathy in my feet,” Olivia explained, which is “a result of damage to the nerves outside of the brain and spinal cord (peripheral nerves)” which can therefore cause pain in the hands and feet, according to the Mayo Clinic.
“It is unfortunately a reaction to radiation, but the rest of me feels great,” Olivia assured. It helps that the Grammy Award-winning singer gets her “energy” from “eating well and from taking a lot of plant medicine and herbs and homeopathy and thinking good thoughts,” which Olivia also mentioned during our interview.
“Everything comes from here [brain], right? What you think about life, what you think about your illness, what you think about everything is affected by your mind, so the mind, body and spirit is really important,” Olivia told us. The Xanadu star keeps her spirit fulfilled thanks to her surroundings: “I have animals around me that I adore. I have a wonderful, loving husband [John Easterling], I have great friends. I’m very, very lucky and I’m very grateful.”
Olivia was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 1992, which returned and spread to her shoulder in 2013. By May of 2017, the disease had not only found its way back in Olivia’s body, but metastasized at the end of her spine. After all these years of fighting cancer, Olivia has had to undergo chemotherapy, radiation and surgery — all the most common ways to attempt to cure the disease — which led her to a new dream.
“There must be kinder therapies that we can have for cancer so that’s my dream,” the “Physical” singer told HollywoodLife, which is the mission of her ONJ Foundation. “To find kinder therapies that work and boast the immune system rather than poisoning it, so I’m working towards that with a focus on plant medicine that’s been so helpful to me.”