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. -

Although it started out romantic, the relationship had its gritty moments. “It’s a roller coaster,” Madonna says of marriage, and Shanghai Surprise, the movie she and Sean made together, had to be a low point for the honeymooners. They got terrible press, partly because of Sean’s penchant for knocking down the odd photographer, partly because critics thought Shanghai Surprise was a lousy movie and Madonna made a lousy missionary and she and Sean had no more chemistry between them than two plates of mashed potatoes. “A hellish nightmare,” is the way Madonna describes the experience. “I thought it was a great script, and the idea of going to Shanghai was exciting to me, and the idea of working with my husband was exciting to me because he’s a great actor. But sometimes everything goes wrong. The director turned out not to know what he was doing, we were on a ship without a captain, and we were so miserable while [we] were working that I’m sure it shows.Some of the tensions were on the set, some were because of the paparazzi. Sean’s whole image was sort of blown up into this impossible person out of control. And then when the movie finally got finished—if it was directed poorly, you can’t imagine how poorly it was edited. It was a great learning experience, that’s all I can say.” One of the things she learned was never to let herself get into such a situation again.