Madonna, full name Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone 1958-
US pop singer and actress

Born in Rochester, Michigan, she trained as a dancer at Michigan University before moving to New York, where she began her professional career as a singer. Highly ambitious and commercially astute, her debut album in 1983 delivered five US hit singles. Her brash, overtly sexual stage persona, controversial fashions and often stormy personal life made her an influential role model for teenagers in the 1980s, and her success has been greatly enhanced by clever promotion and imagemaking. She maintained the controversy level surrounding her with her enormously successful photo-book Sex (1993). She has appeared in a number of films, including her own concert movie, In Bed With Madonna (1991) and the biopic of Eva Per�n, Evita (1996).

Bibliography: Robert Matthew-Walker, Madonna:The Biography (1991)