Madonna

Pop singer. Born August 16, 1958 in Rochester, Michigan. She trained as a dancer at University of Michigan before moving to New York City, where she began her professional career as a back-up singer to a number of New York groups. She hired Michael Jackson's manager prior to releasing Madonna (1983), an album which included five US hit singles. Subsequent albums have included Like a Virgin (1984), True Blue (1986), Ray of of Light (1998), Music (2000), American Life (2003), and Confessions on a Dancefloor (2005).

Madonna has also acted in films, including Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), Shanghai Surprise (1986) and Body of Evidence (1993). In 1996 she starred in the critically acclaimed film adaptation of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Evita (1996). She won a Golden Globe for her performance and her song, "You Must Love Me," earned an Academy Award.

Her defiant and raunchy stage appearances became an important role model for teenagers in the 1980s and 1990s, and her international success has been secured by clever promotion and image-making. This was reinforced in several media in the early 1990s, with the publication of a controversial collection of erotic photographs of herself in Sex (1992), alongside an album, Erotica.

Madonna made her London West End stage debut in 2002 in Up for Grabs. In a new departure, her first children's book, The English Roses, was published in 2003. She was inducted into the inaugural UK Music Hall of Fame in 2004.

Madonna was married to actor Sean Penn from 1984 to 1988. In 1996, she gave birth to Lourdes Maria (Lola) Ciccone Leon, whom she had with her lover and personal trainer, Carlos Leon. She married British director Guy Ritchie in 2000; they have a son, Rocco John Ritchie. In October 2006, during a trip to an orphanage in Malawi, Madonna adopted a baby boy named David Banda.