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. Cosmo 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. -

In the record world, she has lots to say about what she—and everyone else of a Madonna record—does, and from now on, she plans to work the same way in the movie business. She says she is not interested in being a tyrant—“collaborating is what I like”—but she admits she is a very demanding collaborator. “The musicians yell at me because when they take a meal break, I’m looking at my watch the whole time. ‘Okay, 30 minutes is up, get back in the room.’ I hate taking breaks, people come back lethargic, the energy’s down. I mean, I bring my soy milk and my apple and my rice chips to the studio, and I just want to keep working straight through.”