all about Madonna

Madonna has praised her Kabbalah faith for helping her marriage to Guy Ritchie remain strong.
The sexy singer insists the religion has improved their relationship considerably by allowing her to accept the British film director – even when he “irks’ her.
She said: “I can disagree with him but I don’t love him any less.”
Since converting to the faith in 1998, Madonna – whose husband is also a follower of the religion – has increasingly allowed her beliefs to influence every aspect of her life.
Earlier this month, Madonna reportedly sacked her long-term manager, Caresse Henry, for having an affair with one of her bodyguards – because it went against Kabbalah teachings.
Sources claim the 46-year-old star consulted her rabbi on the matter and then fired her manager – who had also converted to the mystical Jewish-based faith – ending a working relationship that had spanned 13 years.
A source said at the time: “Madonna and Guy are deeply committed to their Kabbalah faith, which preaches monogamy and faithfulness.
“It’s ironic, because Madonna used to eat men for breakfast. But now she’s a mother and Kabbalist, she believes cheating is a serious sin.”
source : femalefirst

Madonna’s often-criticised movie career has landed her a new title – as the Worst Rock-Star Actor of All Time.
While the Michigan native has enjoyed phenomenal success as a pop superstar, Madonna’s efforts on the silver screen have been met with an icy response from both critics and fans – most recently with her embarrassing flop Cast Away.
Music magazine Blender, which conducted the poll of 25 stars, says: “Invariably cast as an irresistible femme fatale – Breathless Mahoney in Dick Tracy, Susan in Desperately Seeking Susan – yet cannot ‘do’ sexy.
“Instead, she adopts the glassy-eyed expression of someone on a cocktail of prescription drugs and delivers her lines as if reading aloud from the letters of a stalker.”
The Spice Girls landed in 19th place, Mick Jagger at 17th, Sting at 24th and Ozzy Osbourne at 21st.
The top 10 is as follows:
1. Madonna
2. Bob Dylan
3. Mariah Carey
4. Jon Bon Jovi
5. Elvis Presley
6. Britney
7. Vanilla Ice
8. Neil Diamond
9. Gene Simmons
10. Master P
source : breakingnews.iol.ie

A new book reveals Madonna’s bad behaviour during rehearsals for the 1991 Oscars. She performed “Sooner Or Later” from the film “Dick Tracy” at the ceremony. The song, written by Stephen Sondheim, won the Best Music, Original Song award. In his new book “The Big Show: High Times and Dirty Dealings at the Academy Awards” writer Steve Pond details the singer’s attack on a technician. The man was supposed to supply her with a microphone before she appeared on stage through a trap door but had fallen asleep.
Pond claims she launched into “an astonishing profane tirade despite the fact that the area below the stage was also occupied by a group of children.”
“Furious, she grabbed him around the neck and lifted him bodily off the ground, not relinquishing her grip until the trapdoor opened and she began to rise.” Pond adds that when her performance was delayed due to a camera operator being injured falling from the stage into the orchestra pit, Madonna was unsympathetic. He quotes her as saying: “But, she’s just lying there. Can’t we just do this?” “The Big Show” is published in the UK on January 1.
source : launch

Pop icon Madonna recently had the crew of the Versace shoot that she is modelling for in a tizzy after she handed a huge list of diva demands.
The “Material Girl” singer is the face of Versace’s spring summer collection and had teamed up with the designer exactly ten years back for a similar shoot, reports The Sun.
Her demands included large bottles of Kabbalah water, fresh yellow and white flowers and a series of drinks at specific temperatures among other things.
source : ani

For Madonna, being on stage isn’t as easy as it might look to her audiences.
In fact, it’s anything but.
“Its pretty overwhelming, to tell you the truth,” she revealed to The Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith in the second of a two-part interview. “One thing I’m struck with is, when I watch myself performing on the stage, I’m astonished at the difference between what I’m seeing and what I think the audience sees and what I feel.
“What I see is really pulled together and really choreographed and (has) nice costumes and good lighting and good sound. What’s going on inside of me is like a war.
“I’m gasping for breath. I’m trying to remember everything I’m supposed to be, the words to the songs, the notes on the guitar, the steps. I’m thinking about the pain in my back. I’m trying to get enough oxygen. I’m looking at people’s faces. Some people are desperate, some people are so full of love. It’s so extreme, I always think when I go out on stage that I’m going into battle.”
The diva told Smith the pressure doesn’t stop there.
“I wear ‘inner ears’ so we don’t have monitors all over the stage, so that the sound in my head — you know, when you plug up your ears, you can hear your heart beat and hear yourself breathing? So I’ve got that on the stage as well. I don’t hear the crowds, so it’s a very surreal experience, the whole thing.”
Madonna has taken up Kaballah, a form of Jewish mysticism, and she says it’s impacting her life “enormously.”
“One of the central aspects to the study of Kaballah,” she tells Smith, “is the idea that we are responsible for our behavior, we are responsible for everything that happens to us. It’s very liberating to not think of yourself as a victim. So I like that aspect. That has freed me enormously.
“I spent a lot of years feeling sorry for myself, when I was a child, the death of my mother, or growing up and feeling like I didn’t have what other people had. I find it very empowering, although it seems daunting at first, to go, ‘You know what, I deserve that, I own that, I brought that to me. That’s a very different way for me to look at life.
“It’s very liberating. So that has influenced me enormously. I’m getting better at not being bothered by things. I’m getting better at not taking things personally.”
And that, in turn, is helping her marriage, Madonna says. “I’m getting better at being married and living with somebody who, for lack of a better phrase, irks me sometimes. I’m getting better at accepting. I suppose I can disagree with what he says or what he does, but I don’t love him less. I’m getting better at loving my husband unconditionally.”
Madonna kidded Smith about a few things he admitted to her. “You didn’t read my books ’til last week; you didn’t go to my concerts. Anything else you want to say that will disappoint me?”
Smith said, “Well, I could be completely sycophantic.”
Madonna didn’t let him off the hook that easily: “There’s somewhere between ignoring me and being a sycophant.”
source : cbs

We all know Madonna, the talented and often controversial entertainer.
But how many of us know her other sides? Madonna, the children’s book author. Or Madonna, the housewife.
She sat down with The Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith in London last week and gave a rare glimpse into those other parts of her world, in the first of a two-part interview.
“I get up in the morning with my kids, and that’s really painful for me; my husband keeps me up late,” Madonna reveals. “I’m with the kids, and then they go off to school, and I stay home and I become a sargeant in my house and go into my office and start going through the lists that have been made by my hardworking, diligent staff and start delegating responsibility. (I) spend several hours doing that, being a taskmaster, and then I do some kind of exercise. Is this boring?” she interrupts herself, asking interviewer Smith a question.
“No,” answers Smith, “I had this vision of you padding around in housecoat and fuzzy slippers with a cup of tea.”
“No,” Madonna quips. “I drink very strong coffee, I have Chinese slippers, and I usually wear juicy tracksuits. Are you getting the picture? Hair messed up, grumpy expression on my face until I’ve had a cup of coffee.”
But Madonna has found time to write four highly successful and insightful children’s books, with a fifth on the way.
What does it do for her to write these books, Smith wondered. “It’s another outlet for me to share my stories,” Madonna answered. “I sit in front of the computer and stick my little statue, who’s my writing muse, next to my computer and, OK, I’m going to write and it comes. “It’s a statue of a kneeling woman, but she has a really thoughtful expression on her face.”
“A woman on her knees?” Smith interjects.
“Oh, God, don’t read that into it,” Madonna shoots back. “You had to go there, Harry.”
“That’s a Madonna response,” Smith pointed out. “I was about to say that’s about supplication, someone asking for some maybe even divine guidance.”
“Yes,” Madonna said. “That’s what I do on a regular basis.”
Smith told Madonna he felt that, by reading the children’s books, he felt like he “had an insight into who’s inside you.”
“Probably,” Madonna observed, “because there’s more stillness in writing; with a book, you can hear me probably more clearly.”
Madonna’s first three children’s books launched within one year of each other, and have sold more than 1.5 million copies worldwide.
Callaway Books has released a boxed-set of her first three children’s titles, “The English Rose,” “Mr. Peabody’s Apples,” and “Yakov and the Seven Thieves.”
The first of them, “The English Rose,” was released simultaneously in 30 languages and over 100 countries in September, 2003. It became the biggest and fastest-selling book ever by a first time children’s author.
It’s about four 11-year-old girls who are best friends, but jealous of another girl in the neighborhood. “She’s more aloof,” as Madonna described her to Smith, “mysterious. “She seems like she has the perfect life. She’s prettier, she seems like she’s really good, so they decide to not include her in the group because she’s too good at everything. A very common thing, I think with girls.
“The idea for the story came from my daughter. There was a clique of girls when she was in first grade, and the teacher called them the English roses. She told me that sometimes girls treated her different at school because I was her mother.”
The four wind up getting a surprising lesson from a fairy godmother about the difference between appearance and reality.
“The English Rose” was quickly followed by “Mr. Peabody’s Apples” in November, 2003.
It’s a story of the power of words and the importance of teachers. The story takes place in 1949 in Happville, USA. Mr. Peabody, a beloved elementary school teacher and baseball coach, one day finds himself ostracized when rumors about him spread through the small town. Mr. Peabody silences the gossip with an unforgettable and poignant lesson about how we must choose our words carefully to avoid causing harm to others.” The book is said to have been inspired by a story told to Madonna by her Kabbalah teacher. Kaballah is a form of Jewish mysticism.
“That’s another story I think most people can relate to,” Madonna said to Smith. “We all love to gossip, even really evolved people like me,” she laughed, as did Smith. “The story’s about having people stop and think every once in awhile about what they’re going to say to someone and what this might do to someone,” Madonna continued.

In June, 2004, “Yakov and the Seven Thieves” was released. According to Madonna, I’ts the story of how all of us have the ability to unlock the gates of Heaven, no matter how unworthy we think we are. For when we go against our selfish natures, we make miracles happen, in our lives and in the lives of others.”
Last month marked the release of Madonna’s fourth children’s book, “The Aventures of Abdi.” Like her other three, it was written for readers aged six and up.
“The Adventures of Abdi” is the story of a little boy who has been given a very big task: to deliver the most precious necklace in the world to the queen. Along the way he is robbed in the desert, thrown in a dungeon and has a surprising encounter with a snake. But no matter what obstacles he faces, Abdi never gives up hope, guided by the words of his teacher, Eli: “Everything that happens is for the best.”
Madonna’s fifth book, “Lotsa de Casha,” is scheduled for release in June. It’s the last in the five-book series. She’s also coming out with an audio edition of all the books.
Madonna and Smith wrap up the first part of the interview with a discussion of how British newspapers came to call her “Madge,” a nickname she dislikes. When it’s pointed out to her that “Madge” could be short for, “Her Majesty,” Madonna relents and says that might not be such a bad moniker, after all.
Tune in to The Early Show Tuesday for the second part of Smith’s interview. They’ll discuss Kaballah, and how it’s helped her marriage.
Asked by fellow co-anchor Hannah Storm what surprised him about Madonna, Smith said, “So smart. So funny. Amazing sense of humor. And…We were
sitting there looking at the tape late Friday night, and I said, ‘I am completely beguiled.’ She charmed my socks off.”

source : cbs.com

Madonna rushed to help her showbiz pal Julia Roberts when she learned the actress was pregnant, giving her advice on avoiding unwanted media attention.
The Like A Virgin singer warned the Pretty Woman actress to claim her twins would be born in January (05) rather than the due date of 6 December (04) to throw the paparazzi.
A source tells British tabloid newspaper Daily Star, “That way, she could throw off the paparazzi a bit.”
Roberts and Madonna met filming of The Next Best Thing, where the singer co-starred with Roberts’s then-boyfriend Benjamin Bratt.
source : contactmusic.com

A shot of Madonna and her dancers/singers are on the cover of Billboard this week.

Madonna is the first artist in chart history to have the top three songs of the year on the dance sales recap, Billboard reports. The only acts that have come close are Soul II Soul, which topped the 1989 list with “Keep On Movin”‘ and “Back to Life,” and M People, No. 2 and No. 3 in 1994 with “Moving On Up” and “One Night in Heaven.”
The No. 1 song of 2004 in the year-end Hot Dance Club Play chart is “Me Against the Music,” followed by “Nothing Fails”/”Nobody Knows Me” at No. 2 and “Love Profusion” at No. 3.
Female artists dominate Billboard’s 2004 year-end Dance recaps, Madonna being followed by Janet Jackson, Beyonce, Annie Lennox, Britney Spears and McLachlan.
source: madonnatribe/reuters

Superstar Madonna left Italian fashion designers Dolce E Gabbana speechless when she ask them to fit her for a premiere.
The style gurus claim they are relaxed in front of most of their A-list clients, but found the Material Girl’s superstardom intimidating.
Designer Stefano Gabanna explains, “She was the one singer who made me feel nervous. Me and Domenico (Dolce) – both of us. We love her, and we knew her from the beginning. I’d seen all her different faces, as a singer, movie star, mother, lover.
“She was the first pop star to ask us for something, and we loved her from a long time ago. People like that, they can make me anxious sometimes.”
source : contactmusic.com