Madonna

An icon of unabashed ambition and sexual magnetism, Madonna has been making headlines since the early MTV Age for her musical talents and much more. Cosmopolitan caught up with the Material Girl in July 1987 to talk about her rising hopes for a career in Hollywood and her then-marriage to bad boy heartthrob Sean Penn. Endearingly frank and forever flirting with the wild side, some things never change: 36 years later, she remains the star we fell for then.

Madonna stands in the lobby of one of New York’s fancy East Side hotels. She is a study in black: black jacket, black skirt, black mod. “I’m here less than 24 hours,” she wails, “and I go running in the park, and when I get back to my room, my jewelry’s gone!”. She seems smaller in person than she looks on film or tape. The skin is porcelain, the eyes as blue as the sapphires that glittered on her stolen bracelet. “Sean just bought that bracelet for me,” she says, and sighs. “They took my engagement ring at the last hotel I was at.” Maybe one day, she’ll learn to put her valuables in the safe; then again, maybe not. I’ve heard “Papa Don’t Preach.” I don’t want to be the one to tell Madonna what she ought to do. Her husband, the actor Sean Penn, isn’t of a mind to lecture her either. Over the phone from Los Angeles (where he’s making the film Colors, under Dennis Hopper’s direction), he promises he’ll replace the bracelet. Still, there is more frustration in the offing. Sean reports that nobody will be able to take Madonna’s car to the shop. Why not? Because she’s got the keys with her.Later, over lunch, she describes the car. Her husband, the demon giver, bought it for her 27th birthday. “It’s a white-and-coral ’56 convertible Thunderbird. Absolutely beautiful.” So why does it have to go into the shop? “Because,” she says, “I ran into something while I was talking on the phone.” A car phone? She grins. “Yeah,” she says. “Kind of disgusting.” The black mood has passed. Madonna has the gift—and it’s one gift her husband didn’t buy her—of self-mockery.