Not that she was a great singer or dancer. And as a writer, she is unlikely to become a classic. And in the cinema, she is still only a debutant … But she is Madonna. That says it all. Meeting with a man whose name has become synonymous with the word “star”. With a star that jealously protects a person in itself.
There is something childish in her diminutiveness, and mischievous in her curls. In a sonorous voice – tenderness. In gestures – restraint. She is thin and feminine. Not soft, definitely not soft. But feminine. And there is nothing in her from that impudent material girl who, like a clot of will, rushes along the podiums of stadiums, captured by her energy, embraced by her. An interview with her is a blitz, despite the fact that we talk for a long time. She answers in short phrases, quickly, accurately, thinks for a split second. I get more tired than she: I have to be ready with the next question almost as soon as I ask the previous one.
She is all engagement and instantly grasps the essence. Perhaps this is how she behaves in life. Concentration and concentration on the main thing.
The impression is that she has the answers to all the questions in the world. And perhaps it does not deceive: she knows exactly HER answers to all questions … Isn’t that the reason for her tremendous success: before formulating the answers, Madonna formulated herself.
Ridiculous jokes in interviews and wild escapades on talk shows, metallic cone bras and crucifixion on stage, calls for the Pope to come to a concert and 26 fuck in half an hour on live TV – all this is some other Madonna. Madonna of millions – millions of viewers, CDs, dollars. I didn’t meet her. Like the four guards, like the three people of her permanent retinue (press officer, make-up artist, hairdresser, secretary), she remained outside the door of the hotel room where we meet. All this in her other, public life. And I met a small, brave, straight woman. Who claims to only count to ten now. Raz – David, adopted son. Two – Rocco, his own son. Three – Lourdes, daughter. Four – Guy, husband. Five is herself. Six, seven, eight, nine are close friends. Ten – CDs, movies, tours, books… Such is the current hierarchy of Madonna’s values. She hit the top ten again. And modestly fit her life into it.
From life to the screen
Madonna has always been like this: her life became material for songs, her biography became discography. But now also cinematography. Young filmmaker Nathan Rissman directed the 90-minute documentary I Am because We Are, produced and starred by Madonna. The film is based on the story of her trip to the African country of Malawi, where almost millions of children lost their parents due to the AIDS epidemic and where Madonna met one-year-old David in one of the shelters, who became her adopted son.
Psychologies: Why do you succeed? Whatever you do – a song, a video, an album, a concert, a tour, a book, a film – everything is popular, everything is in great demand. Do you know the universal recipe for success?
Madonna: Yeah, and also the recipe for the elixir of youth – you see, I’m 50, and I’m good as new.
And yet why do you think you became popular 25 years ago and since then at the zenith of fame?
M .: I envy some people! For example, you. You know exactly what glory is and what success is. And I live in a dual world, and in it everything has a reverse – “non-chocolate” – side. And no matter what my success is, especially in a material sense, I fought and still fight. With the duality of the world, with its contradictions. I fight for my path in it, I try to find it. I fight with myself – to accept life as it is, and not fall into self-deception. I’m fighting…
So maybe you’re just a fighter by nature? From nature?
M .: In general, I got a lot from nature. But as soon as you start to think that you fully own what you have, the talent goes away. I always understood that I was not the owner of my abilities or talent there. I’m just his manager. Awareness of this is one component of success. The other is that I am very curious and try to learn new things. I try to work with people who know more than me. The more I know, the more I can express. And one more thing: if I take on something, I bring it to the end. “To the end” in my profession is the highest degree of fame and sale. My father says: if you do one thing for four days in a row, without being distracted by anything else – just not for a minute and not for anything! – Achieve maximum results. I always follow this principle. True, sometimes the case requires more time than four days.
Has your father always had a major influence on you?
M .: I was five years old when my mother died of breast cancer. So it especially went to the one who stayed with me – dad. Our relationship was important to him – I only now, when the mother herself, appreciated it. But the main thing he struggled with was the feelings that I experienced. Complete loneliness, abandonment. And guilt. I felt like I was expelled from paradise. Paradise is when mom was alive. Then, it turned out, I committed something terrible, some kind of fall, and they expelled me. As an adult, I read: it often happens in children after the loss of someone close – it seems to them that they did something terrible, because of which they were deprived of the most precious thing … Then dad married a second time, as a result I turned out to be the eldest girl in a family with eight children. I tried to help him and my stepmother. And they appreciated it. I felt. Dad always knew how to express gratitude. Not necessarily in material form… it doesn’t matter at all. It is important that I always understood: he appreciates my help. The ability to make it clear that you are grateful is a rare gift. Dad was the first to show me an example of such a gift. But precisely because of this quality of his, I did not want to upset him. And I did not share my school difficulties. And there were many. They didn’t like me very much, especially in high school. I was outside the then standard – sort of wow, but I was interested in music and ballet. And children are very cruel to those who are different from them. And when they really began to persecute me, instead of obeying, becoming like everyone else, I decided to systematically aggravate my differences. I didn’t shave my armpits or my legs. Didn’t use makeup. She refused to follow all those canons that a pretty and correct girl was obliged to follow. For this they only persecuted me more, but it also increased my superiority.
I lived with the feeling: scurry around, kids, but you don’t know who Mahler is! But at the age of 14 I went into dancing with my head, which helped me a lot. I found my way – no confrontation, but just my own. Dad helped me in this in his own way – without interfering. He is generally a person who is not easy to shake. A significant part of my life was spent on surprising him, earning his approval. From early childhood. I was a maniacal A student, obsessed with the desire to make a good impression on my father, sought to manipulate him. He didn’t particularly indulge me. But I always knew that he loved me.
What about your relationship with your stepmother?
M .: I had no particular complaints: I never thought of her as a mother. I just considered her the woman who raised me and guided me in those years. At some point, as a teenager, I simply ignored her – typical behavior of adopted children. I thought that I was deprived of maternal affection, and it is possible that this gave rise to a certain secretiveness of character in me.
Were you lonely?
M .: In a family where there are seven more children besides you, it’s hard to get hung up on yourself. And in general, education in a large family is something that stays with you for life. We weren’t that poor, but I still don’t buy everything I want in the store. Puritan upbringing. Attention to money. Self-restraint.
Do you restrict your children?
M .: I’m rather strict, yes. I do not allow them to make a mess in their rooms, I demand regular cleaning. I always check my lessons. When Lourdes was little, she, if she wanted something, but was not given, threw herself on the floor and started this … I never succumbed to provocation. The child should not control the life of the parents. He must know who is responsible here … I don’t even watch TV much.
Is TV evil?
M .: It limits the imagination. It will atrophy. And TV addiction is definitely evil. Evil is any addiction.
And you do not depend on your fame, on success? They say you threw tantrums when the limousine didn’t pick you up on time…
M .: … and then stopped. I was tense. I was waiting for confirmation of my suspicion that in fact I am not a star and my fame is fake. Then I got tired of fame. Everyone dreams of becoming famous – it’s like insanity. And I say: all this is nonsense. While rushing to the stars, you make a lot of mistakes. And I got a lot of cracks, in the eyes of very many, I remain imbecile.
Your daughter is already a teenager. Did the relationship get worse?
M .: She always had her own opinion. And in this Lourdes has not changed. I realized a long time ago that her strong personal beginning is a challenge to fate for me. I have to accept it—accept that she is different. And by the way, rejoice: her strength will serve her in the future. For me, it’s less of a problem.
You yourself are clearly a strong woman … What is personal strength?
M .: I don’t think personality strength has anything to do with gender. I know many strong and many weak – both men and women. I repeat: everything in the world is ambiguous for me. Sometimes being strong means doing nothing, and vice versa, applying force means showing weakness. Strength for me is ultimately wisdom. The wisdom of relevance. In the world in general, perhaps the most important thing is to know your place. Do not consider yourself neither the navel of the earth, nor small living creatures. Assess yourself and your place realistically.
There is an opinion that in songs, videos, concerts you “sell sex”. That open demonstration of sexuality is the reason for your success. In a word, the whole world is “in bed with Madonna.”
M .: I don’t sell or rent my sexuality. And I don’t belong to anyone. Even those who actually share or shared a bed with me. By and large, only I am in bed with Madonna. I belong only to myself.
You are from a Catholic family, but you profess Kabbalah. Not weird?
M .: Perhaps the only thing more intimate than a bed is faith. Everyone must find their own. What I have found in mine is that it does not require faith itself. It is a way of understanding the world, philosophy. We are fully responsible for ourselves, no one determines anything for us. I am an architect and foreman of my own destiny. I am responsible for my actions and my words. The world does not revolve around me and is not obliged to serve my interests. There is no just good and just evil. If you turn around and analyze your life, you understand: to change, learn, grow, become wiser, more receptive, what helps us more is what we perceive as something bad. So does evil exist at all? Kabbalah helped me formulate something like a law, by which I now live.
What’s the law?
M .: Don’t bother anyone. Don’t judge anyone. Not blaming others for your troubles is a waste of time. Don’t pretend, don’t make excuses, don’t ask, don’t rely on others.
Does that mean you don’t trust?
M .: Not relying on others means not pushing things away from yourself. Trust professionalism. Trust those whom you feel, that is, your own intuition.
Once you began to play in the movies, and this was, they say, one of the reasons for parting with your first husband, an actor. Now you have started making films yourself. Isn’t it dangerous? Your current husband is a director …
M .: It is not dangerous to become colleagues, but to fall into competition. But I say: I now know my place. I made a modest, low-budget film. Only with my own money, I’m going to distribute via the Internet. I just want to do it. I dreamed for a long time, 20 years, but finally I said to myself: stop dreaming, just take it off. And she took off “Abomination and Wisdom.” I’m not proving anything, I’m not competing with anyone. I even filmed in London: my children go to school here, and I don’t want to leave them. In general, now I think: home is where your children go to school.
Happiness. What did that mean to you 30 years ago and what does it mean now?
M .: 30 years ago, my happiness was to survive in New York, have a roof over my head, fight for my place in the sun, feed myself and make the world hear my voice. Happiness now is being grateful that all these wonderful things are still happening to me.
And you don’t envy anyone?
M .: Well … I certainly don’t envy anyone, it’s my children: I will forever loom behind them. And there is nothing to help them. I’m realist.
That is, after all, you are a material girl?
M .: 50 years is no longer a girl. And not material. 50 is a good time to look at things not from a material point of view, but … from a realistic one. And it is realistic to admit that in the world there is love without conditions, there is gratitude without profit, there is devotion without selfishness. That’s my realism.
Private bussiness
- 1958: August 16 in Bay City (Michigan) in a family of devout Catholics, engineer Silvio Ciccone and Madonna Forten, the third child was born – Madonna Louise Ciccone (three more children followed her).
- 1963: Death of mother, three years later her father remarries.
- 1976: Enters the University of Michigan in the dance department.
- 1978: Moves to New York, learns ballet from choreographer Alvin Ailey, earns a living as a model, cloakroom attendant, and fast food eateries.
- 1979: Film debut in the erotic drama A Certain Sacrifice.
- 1980: Forms Modern Dance and Emmy with boyfriend Stephen Bray.
- 1983: Альбом Madonna/The First Album.
- 1984: Album Like a Virgin, lead songs Like a Virgin, Material Girl in the charts for the whole next year.
- 1985: Seeking Desperately for Susan by Susan Sidelman; marries actor Sean Penn.
- 1989: Divorce from Penn.
- 1991: Alek Keshishian’s film “In Bed with Madonna”.
- 1992: Releases a book of erotic photos and prose “Sex” and the album Erotica; Grammy Award for Best Music Video (Madonna: Blond Ambition World Tour Live).
- 1996: Birth of Lourdes, daughter by boyfriend and personal fitness trainer Carlos Leon; “Golden Globe” for his role in “Evita” by Alan Parker.
- 1998: Three-time Grammy-winning Ray of Light album.
- 2000: Birth of son Rocco; marries his father, British filmmaker Guy Ritchie.
- 2002: Begins to practice Kabbalah.
- 2003: Releases children’s books, English Roses and Mr. Peabody’s Apples, followed by three more.
- 2006: Adopts XNUMX year old David from Malawi, Africa.
- 2008: “Abomination and Fury”, directorial film debut; Grammy for Best Video (Madonna: The Confessions Tour Live from London); album Hard Candy; Nathan Rissman’s documentary I Am because We Are (“I am because we are”), produced and starred by Madonna.