Long before Olivia Newton-John’s final marriage to John Easterling, there was another man standing beside her — a handsome young dancer she met while making one of the most extravagant films of her career.
His name was Matt Lattanzi.
When they met on the set of Xanadu, Olivia was already an international superstar. Lattanzi was a young dancer at the beginning of his career. She was about 10 years older than him, and years later Olivia admitted that somewhere in the back of her mind, she’d always wondered whether that difference might eventually matter.
It did not stop them from falling in love.
They married, welcomed Olivia’s only child and spent more than a decade together. Then came the most frightening period of Olivia’s life: her first breast-cancer diagnosis.
Their marriage survived the immediate crisis.
But it didn’t survive forever.
And today, decades after leaving Hollywood behind, Lattanzi has lived a remarkably different life from the glamorous young dancer seen beside Olivia in their early RARE PHOTOS.
They met while Olivia was making Xanadu
It was 1980, and Olivia Newton-John was near the height of her fame.
Grease had transformed her into an international movie star only two years earlier, while songs such as “Hopelessly Devoted to You” had established her as one of the most recognizable singers in the world.
Then came Xanadu.
The movie paired Newton-John with Gene Kelly and Michael Beck in an extravagant mixture of romance, fantasy, roller skating and music.
Matt Lattanzi was one of the dancers working on the production.
He was 20.
Olivia was 31.
According to a 2026 biography of Newton-John, their relationship began discreetly before filming had even finished, with Lattanzi reportedly spending nights with Olivia at her Beverly Wilshire Hotel suite. AOL.com
The movie wasn’t the critical success everyone had hoped for.
But Olivia walked away from Xanadu with something considerably more lasting.
She had met the man who would become her first husband.
Their age difference didn’t stop the relationship
Olivia and Matt remained together for several years before marrying in December 1984. Wikipedia
From the outside, they made an intriguing couple.
Olivia was an established star whose career stretched back to the 1960s.
Matt was still building his own career as an actor and dancer.
But photographs from those years capture a surprisingly ordinary side of Newton-John’s life — the superstar smiling beside her younger husband rather than posing alone beneath stage lights.
Then their family grew.
On January 17, 1986, Olivia gave birth to their daughter, Chloe Rose Lattanzi. People.com
Motherhood became one of the defining experiences of Olivia’s life.
And for several years, the three appeared to have built exactly the family she’d wanted.
Then Olivia discovered she had breast cancer
Everything changed in 1992.
Newton-John was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent treatment that included surgery and chemotherapy.
Her daughter was still a little girl.
Olivia initially chose not to tell Chloe what was happening because Chloe had recently lost a young friend to cancer and associated the disease with death. She later recalled arranging for Chloe to be elsewhere during chemotherapy so her daughter wouldn’t see her at her sickest. Los Angeles Times
Matt, meanwhile, was there.
Contemporary accounts describe him as deeply supportive during his wife’s treatment. Lattanzi himself acknowledged how frightening the experience had been for him, saying that he feared for Olivia and sometimes became depressed because of what she was enduring. AOL.com
Olivia survived that first diagnosis.
But surviving also changed her.
Cancer changed the way she looked at life
Newton-John would later describe cancer as an experience that reordered her priorities.
Things that had once seemed important suddenly didn’t carry the same weight.
She became increasingly interested in wellness, environmental causes and spirituality. She pulled back professionally for a period and concentrated on recovery and family. Los Angeles Times
And gradually, differences inside her marriage became more difficult to ignore.
A 1995 People report published around the couple’s separation described Olivia and Matt as having increasingly different lifestyles and interests. According to people close to them, several months of couples therapy did not resolve those differences. onlyolivia.com
Their cancer experience hadn’t immediately driven them apart.
In fact, the same contemporary account suggested that the crisis temporarily brought them closer, with Matt supporting Olivia throughout treatment.
The deeper reassessment appears to have come afterward. onlyolivia.com
Olivia had quietly wondered whether the age gap would catch up with them
Years later, she made a revealing admission.
Because she’d been older when they met, Olivia said she’d always carried a slight feeling that their marriage might not last forever.
Matt had been extraordinarily young when their relationship began.
She wondered whether he might eventually reach a point where he wanted to explore a different life.
“I didn’t want that to happen,” she explained, while acknowledging that somewhere inside she’d understood the possibility. People.com
By 1995, the couple announced an amicable separation.
Their marriage of roughly a decade was over.
They later divorced. Wikipedia
But the breakup became more complicated in the tabloids
There was another part of the story that attracted enormous attention.
After separating from Olivia, Lattanzi entered a relationship with Cindy Jessup, a considerably younger woman who had previously worked as a babysitter for the family.
The timing inevitably generated rumors about whether the relationship had begun before Olivia and Matt separated.
Reports published later said Lattanzi and Jessup maintained that there had been no romance while she was working for the family. NZ Herald
Olivia, remarkably, didn’t spend years publicly attacking her former husband.
Instead, she maintained a cordial relationship with him.
That became especially important because they shared Chloe.
Their daughter remained the connection between them
The divorce didn’t turn Olivia and Matt into permanent enemies.
Years later, Olivia said she and Matt — along with their respective partners — remained friends and could celebrate Christmas and birthdays together. Chloe even said her fantasy was for everyone to live on the same property because she wanted the people she loved close together. Now To Love
That is perhaps the most surprising part of their story.
The marriage failed.
But the family didn’t entirely disappear.
A 2000 Los Angeles Times profile noted that Matt lived nearby and that Olivia described their post-divorce relationship as cordial. Los Angeles Times
Their connection simply took another form.
Matt eventually disappeared from Hollywood
Lattanzi’s life also changed dramatically after his marriage to one of the world’s most recognizable entertainers.
His acting career largely wound down during the 1990s.
His credits had included Xanadu, My Tutor, Rich and Famous and the Australian soap Paradise Beach, but eventually the screen appearances became increasingly rare.
By 2008, reports described him as living a quieter, environmentally conscious life near Malibu. That same year he briefly returned to television for Rock the Cradle, where he appeared in support of daughter Chloe. Wikipedia
For people who remember the dark-haired young dancer standing beside Olivia in the 1980s, later photographs can therefore be surprising.
Decades have passed.
The youthful dancer naturally looks very different today.
Meanwhile, Olivia’s life entered entirely new chapters
After Matt, Newton-John began a long relationship with cameraman Patrick McDermott.
That relationship ended under extraordinary circumstances when McDermott disappeared during a 2005 fishing trip off California. A Coast Guard investigation later concluded that he was most likely lost at sea. Wikipedia
Then came John Easterling.
Olivia married Easterling in 2008, and he remained her husband through the final years of her life.
Her cancer also returned.
Newton-John eventually lived with metastatic breast cancer, continuing to advocate for cancer research and wellness while establishing a legacy far beyond music and movies. Her Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness & Research Centre became one of the projects most closely associated with her later life. Vogue
She died on August 8, 2022, at 73. Vogue
Matt’s connection to Olivia didn’t end with their divorce
When Newton-John died, their daughter Chloe became the clearest living connection between the former couple.
Chloe has continued supporting her mother’s legacy, including participating in the annual Walk for Wellness benefiting the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness & Research Centre. People.com
And the story of Olivia and Matt looks rather different with the distance of several decades.
It’s easy to reduce it to a dramatic headline:
The superstar.
The dancer 10 years younger.
Cancer.
Divorce.
The younger woman.
But the reality was less tidy.
Matt supported Olivia during the terrifying first stage of her cancer experience. Olivia acknowledged that their differences became more apparent as her outlook on life changed. And despite the end of their marriage, they managed to remain connected through their daughter. onlyolivia.com
The rare photographs preserve a completely different Olivia
Perhaps that’s why the RARE PHOTOS of Olivia Newton-John and Matt Lattanzi feel so striking today.
They capture Olivia between two versions of herself.
She was no longer simply Sandy from Grease.
She wasn’t yet the cancer advocate and wellness campaigner who would define so much of her later life.
She was a woman in her 30s and 40s building a family, raising her only daughter and trying to create something permanent with the young dancer she’d unexpectedly fallen for on a movie set.
The marriage ultimately lasted about a decade.
The friendship lasted much longer.
And Olivia’s own reflections suggest she eventually made peace with that distinction.
She once believed marriage meant forever. Life gave her something more complicated: a husband who became an ex-husband, an ex-husband who remained family, and a daughter who ensured that the two would always share something far more enduring than the romance that first began on the set of Xanadu.
For more on Olivia Newton-John’s fascinating relationships, including the man who stayed by her side through her final years, check out Inside Olivia Newton-John’s Complicated Love Life. You might also enjoy reading about how Catherine Zeta-Jones Faced a Wave of Debate as Morticia in Wednesday Season 2 or when Carrie Underwood Surprised Luke Bryan’s Sold-Out Nashville Crowd.
