Olivia Newton John
Newton John almost didn't take on the role of Sandy; she was worried that at the age of twenty nine, she was too old to convincingly play the part of a teenager. It took a screen test and the persuasion of her co-star John Travolta to convince her to say yes and sign on to the project, which turned out to be the catalyst for a meteoric rise in her career around the world.
Born in Mill Road Hospital, Cambridge, England, Newton John grew up in Australia, and began her singing career at the age of fourteen, but despite frequent appearances on Australian television shows, it was not until returning to London with fellow Aussie Pat Farrar and touring nightclubs where the duo performed that she began to make some headway. Her first number one single was If You Love Me Let Me Know, reaching the top of the charts on both sides of the Atlantic. In all, Newton John has sold over one hundred million records worldwide, making her one of the best-selling artists of all time. She was also something of a quiet groundbreaker in Nashville, where she was initially not made very welcome; after winning an Academy of Country Music Award in the Best Female Artist category, she received backlash because it was unpopular that an "outsider" should beat out a Nashville heavyweight like Loretta Lyn; however, performers were largely on her side, and embraced her so widely that producers and executives had to concede that she was good for the genre and its development into other markets. In doing so she also paved the way for fellow Aussies like Keith Urban and Kasey Chambers in the country music capital of the world.
In later years, Newton John became an advocate for environmental awareness and for women's health, creating and funding the Olivia Newton John Cancer Institute in Sydney, Australia, where she also started her own clothing line, Koala Blue.
John Traolta
Travolta was already a big screen musical heavyweight when he was cast as Danny Zuko thanks in large part to his performance in Saturday Night Fever the preceding year, and the iconic image of him wearing a white tuxedo on the movie's poster. He had already appeared in the Broadway, and touring, productions of Grease, playing a peripheral member of the T-Birds. After the global success of the film his career rather surprisingly stagnated, and he was hardly seen at all during the nineteen eighties; a resurgence began with the films Look Who's Talking and Look Who's Talking II, opposite Kirstie Alley, which led Quentin Tarantino to cast him as a gun-happy gangster in Pulp Fiction.
In more recent years, Travolta has developed and appeared in big screen adaptations of science fiction books by L. Ron Hubbard, the creator of Scientology, of which Travolta is a vocal member.
Stockard Channing
Channing's Rizzo was somewhat of a bad girl, and won her both fans and critical acclaim. Known primarily for her role as the leader of the Pink Ladies, and for playing Abbey Bartlet on the television drama series The West Wing, Channing is also a respected and much decorated stage actress with a slew of Tony Award nominations; including one in the Best Actress category for her role in the Broadway production of Six Degrees of Separation, a role she reprised for the big screen, winning an Academy Award nomination in the same category.
Channing has received an incredible thirteen Primetime Emmy Award nominations, winning two in the same year for her work on The West Wing and The Matthew Shepard Story respectively, both in the same year. Between 2012 and 2016 she also played the recurring role of Veronica Loy on the television drama series The Good Wife.
Jeff Conaway
Having played the role of Danny Zuko on Broadway, Conaway was cast as the leader of the T-Birds in the big screen adaptation of the musical. He also found romance in his personal life whilst working on the movie, marrying Olivia Newton John's sister Rona in 1980. Sadly their union lasted only five years, due largely to Conaway's excessive drug use and addition. Although he believed that he had conquered his problems during the nineteen nineties a relapse led him to appear on the television "reality" show Celebrity Rehab with Dr Drew; however, despite participating in two consecutive seasons of the show, he passed away in 2011 as a result of an overdose of pain medication.
Didi Conn
Known for her Betty Boop voice, Conn is best recognized for her role as Frenchy, but also for playing Denise Stevens Downey in the popular television sit-com Benson, with Robert Guillaume. She is the only member of the original Grease cast to have appeared in all three of the screen adaptations, including the Grease : Live special that aired in 2016.
After her son, Daniel, was diagnosed with autism, Conn became an advocate for families with children on the autism spectrum.
Dinah Manoff
Manoff is known as much for her role on the television series Soap as she is for the role of hapless and flirtatious Marty in Grease. Like many of her cast-mates, she has also enjoyed great success on the Broadway stage, winning a Tony award for her portrayal of Libby Tucker in I Ought To Be In Pictures, a role she also reprised in the big screen adaptation.
Jamie Donnelly
Donnelly was the only member of the cast to reprise the same character that she had played on Broadway in the film version of Grease; at the time of production, she was thirty one years old, and had to color her hair because she was already starting to gray. Working consistently on both stage and screen since the nineteen seventies, she has recently appeared in the Ray Donovan movie franchise and in the 2015 movie Black Mass.
Michael Tucci
Tucci is best known for his role in Grease, which led to several appearances on The Gary Shandling Show, and three years touring with Broadway Across America playing Amos Hart in the musical Chicago.
Sid Cesar
Something of a television pioneer, Cesar introduced Cesar's Hour to the viewing public in the 1950s, introducing new comics and comedians and springboarding the careers of some of stand-ups most popular performers. Cesar himself was considered a comic actor rather than a comedian, a mantle which never sat very well with him, because of his writing skill as well as the way in which he delivered a punchline. In 2011 he was awarded the Critics Association Lifetime Achievement Award.
