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(born Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone), fabulously popular and audacious American rock singer and actress; b. Bay City, Mich., Aug. 16, 1958. Madonna took up acting and dancing while attending junior high school in Pontiac, Michigan. After private dance lessons from 1972 to 1976, she studied on scholarship at the University of Michigan from 1976 to 1978.

Making her way to N.Y., Madonna eked out a living by modeling and acting in an underground film. She worked with Alvin Ailey's dance group and studied choreography with Pearl Lang. She then studied drums and guitar with Dan Gilroy. After working with the disco star Patrick Hernandez in Paris, she returned to N.Y., appearing as a drummer and singer with Gilroy's Breakfast Club rock group. In 1982 she organized her own band and in 1983 brought out her first album, Madonna, with the hits Borderline and Lucky Star. With her album Like a Virgin (1984), she achieved massive success, which led to her first coast-to-coast tour.

Madonna made a career out of changing her look and provoking critics and admirers alike by her "daring" use of her own image in videos and on tour. Meanwhile, she continued to churn out the hits through the mid-'80s, including the controversial single, Papa Don't Preach, which seemed to endorse out-of-wedlock pregnancy.

At the same time, Madonna pursued a film career. In 1985 she appeared in the critically acclaimed film Desperately Seeking Susan. She also acted in Who's That Girl? two years later, a box-office bomb, although the title song was a hit. The popular movie Dick Tracy in 1990 featured Madonna as a slinky, sequined, torch singer/gun moll. Her most successful screen role was 1996's Evita, in which she showed herself capable of singing a demanding score by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Meanwhile, her pop career continued. Her album Like a Prayer continued the Madonna controversies. The title song, with a video showing Madonna dancing in front of burning crosses and romancing a black Jesus figure, naturally upset some Christians. She followed it with a 1991 documentary, Truth or Dare, a warts-and-all glimpse of her 1990 tour.

In the early '90s, Madonna seemed obsessed by her own sexuality. In 1992 she released the graphic picture book Sex, showing her "fantasies" of sexual relationships, including disturbing images of violent sexual behavior. The book was an immediate hit, despite the controversy over its content. The accompanying album, Erotica, was less of a success. This was followed by 1994's Bedtime Stories, which included the song Human Nature, which had a particularly effective, tightly choreographed music video. It was followed in 1995 by a rather lukewarm collection, Something to Remember.

After a few years out of the limelight and the top of the charts, Madonna bore a child (a daughter, whom she named Lourdes) in 1996. This was followed by a new look and a new album, Ray of Light, released in 1998. Madonna, now a follower of the Jewish mystical book the Kabalah, proclaimed herself remade by motherhood. The album, combining techno-pop backings with Madonnas emotional lyrics, was a critical success, although not as successful commercially as her earlier releases.