Olivia Newton-John (born September 26, 1948) is an English-born Australian pop singer and actress. Her highly acclaimed vocal musical and acting talents made her a globally recognized name. Newton-John's parents were Brinley Newton-John and Irene Born. Irene was the eldest child of Max Born, a German Nobel prize-winning physicist who fled from Germany with his wife in the 1930s in order to avoid persecution due to Born's Jewish heritage and his wife's part Jewish descent. Olivia's father, Brin Newton-John, originally from Wales, was an MI5 officer attached to the Enigma machine project at Bletchley Park, and the officer who took Rudolf Hess into custody when he parachuted into Scotland in May 1941.