MEGASTAR MADGE HITS MAGICAL Still in Vogue at 60
Madonna as a tot, with mum Singer as a little girl School year book at 18 SHE is an icon of pop erotica, the sultry superstar who has gloried in basques throughout her career. And as she turns 60 on Thursday, chart queen Madonna will become the seductress who puts the sex into sexagenarian. In four decades of flirting with controversy, she has sold more than 300 million albums – and is already busy on her hotlyanticipated 14th studio release. From tours alone, she has netted more than £1billion. Tirelessly reinventing herself as she evolved from dancer to global megastar, Madonna Louise Ciccone has earned of adoring admirers – including a select few who have also won her rebel heart.
One of six children of Italian Catholic emigrants, Madonna was left devastated at five years old when her mum, whose name she shared, died of breast cancer. As a teen, she developed her defining rebel streak.
Wyn Cooper, who dated her as a fellow pupil at Rochester Adams High School in Michigan, remembers the pair’s mischief fondly.
He recalled: “We went skinnydipping, and we used to drive around before school smoking pot and listening to David Bowie.”
But the intelligent teen, a straightA student, also had an appetite to learn. Wyn said: “I’d loan her books and we’d discuss them. I was sort of her tutor.” On leaving school, Madonna won a dance scholarship to the University of Michigan.
But at 20 she dropped out – and took herself to New York. There, she waitressed at Dunkin’ Donuts. She boosted her pay posing nude for photography students for $30.
She sat twice for photographer Martin Schreiber, the class teacher, before striking up a brief relationship with him after their shoot.
“There was a fire in her,” Schreiber told us from his home in Paris. “I was a momentary infatuation for her. She was a lovely young woman.”
The photographer, now 72, later sold five of Madonna’s nudes to Playboy for a six-figure sum. He added: “She had a rebelliousness, perhaps a resentment of her backmillions ground, the restrictions of Catholicism.” Challenging that upbringing would be a key theme – with religious imagery featuring frequently.
Madonna dedicated 1986 hit Papa Don’t Preach to Pope John Paul II. In 2006 the Vatican called for her excommunication when she staged a mock crucifixion on her Confessions tour – in Rome.
Her multiple reinventions also took her into film, with 1985’s Desperately Seeking Susan proving her screen breakthrough.