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.

Dreamer, dancer, singer, actor (coming next month: Who’s That Girl with Griffin Dunne), cookie eater…she may just be the biggest star in the entertainment world today. Her first album (Madonna), made in 1983, sold more than 6 million copies; her second (Like a Virgin) sold 14 million; her third (True Blue) has yielded three number one singles, “Papa Don’t Preach,” “Live to Tell,” and “Open Your Heart.” She is also the only female vocalist—so far—to have had five number one hits in the ’80s. Many people may have been surprised by this. Madonna isn’t one of them. She is bored with rehashing the old stories, she doesn’t want to talk about coming to New York in 1978 with 35 dollars in her pocket, she doesn’t want to hear how she stepped on the fingers of every man who offered her a hand up on her way to the top. She never, she says, slept with anybody just because he could do something for her. “Whatever I learned or got from a man or a boyfriend, they got plenty from me. I don’t feel like I ever took advantage of anyone.” (This would appear to be true. Steve Bray, a musician she picked up in a disco when she was 17, is still writing songs with her, 11 years later.) That she always had ambition, and that many of whom she left behind are resentful, she doesn’t deny. “You can’t succeed unless you move,” she says, “and you can’t take the whole world with you".