Family Tree Tuesday – Olivia Newton-John

Olivia Newton-John

Olivia Newton-John has enjoyed great success as both a singer and an actress. Over the course of her long career, she has won 4 Grammy awards and sold over 100 million albums worldwide. In 1978, she co-starred along with John Travolta in the musical Grease, which became one of the most successful movie soundtracks of all time.

On September 26, 1948, Olivia was born in Cambridge, England to Brinley Newton-John and Irene Born. Her father was a MI5 officer during World War II and took prominent Nazi politician Rudolf Hess into custody. Her mother came from a highly academic family with an impressive scientific pedigree. Irene was the eldest daughter of Nobel Prize winning physicist Max Born, whose work was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics. Olivia’s uncle, Gustav Victor Born, became a doctor and is Emeritus Professor at King’s College London.

Max Born

Olivia’s great grandfather, Gustav Jacob Born, was a prominent German histologist and medical author. He made several technical inventions, including a method for reproducing larger scale anatomical and embryological objects through plastic.

Through her maternal grandmother Hedwig Born (Ehrenberg)‘s lineage, you will find that both Olivia’s great grandfather Victor Ehrenberg and second great grandfather Rudolf von Jhering were German jurist. Because of her maternal grandmother’s Jewish heritage, Max Born and his family fled Germany in 1933 to Great Britain.

Following family tradition in academia, Olivia’s brother, Hugh Newton-John, became a doctor. Her older sister, Rona Newton-John, became a model and actress and was once married to late actor Jeff Conaway.

In 1984, Olivia married actor and dancer Matt Lattanzi, whom she met while working on the film Xanadu. The couple divorced in 1995. They have one daughter, singer and actress Chloe Lattanzi.

Check out her family tree on Geni!

Olivia Newton-John's family tree