The two cultural icons — Liz and Madonna — became good friends, and remain so today. In common with Elizabeth Taylor was Madonna’s newfound spiritual pursuit; she had recently become interested in Kabbalah, a mystical, medieval branch of Judaism that emphasized the link between self and universe. Madonna began inviting friends to study it with her, describing it as “a mystical interpretation of the Old Testament.”
With many reasons to be exhausted by her whirlwind life and career — countless Grammys, sold-out tours, worldwide adulation — perhaps it seemed that the only thing left for Madonna to do was finally and truly to embrace who she really was, and not just who she seemed to be when attached to her career, or to a man. She became such a devout follower of Kabbalah that she hosted a high-powered reception in Los Angeles on September 18 to discuss the philosophy with friends and business associates. “Kabbalah is the one place I don’t feel like a celebrity,” she said. Although she had spent most of her life discussing her Catholic upbringing both in positive and negative terms, Madonna now stated that nothing had ever spoken to her like Kabbalah and that only now did she feel fully equipped emotionally to take responsibility for her life. After returning to Los Angeles, Madonna surprised some of her associates by regularly attending Bible classes at the Kabbalah Learning Center in Los Angeles. This spiritual awakening would also plant the seeds for her next artistic breakthrough.
Although Elizabeth Taylor and other friends had urged her to marry the father of her daughter, by the early spring of 1997 Carlos Leon seemed to be rapidly disappearing from Madonna’s life. Most observers believed that Madonna had ended the relationship with Carlos after she got what she wanted from him: a child. It wasn’t that simple. In fact, it was Carlos who began to lose interest in continuing his relationship with Madonna and, conveniently, at just about the same time she began to distance herself from him. That they would not marry would actually be a mutual decision. After the birth of Lourdes, he told friends that he couldn’t be married to a woman “who never goes to bed before two in the morning and who then wakes up at five to see what has been published about her in some goddamn foreign country.” She has a taste for good living, he said, but no great capacity for enjoyment, “because something is always going on in her life, some big dramatic thing, that just ruins everything that day for her. It’s not fair. She works too hard to have so many bad days.”
Another problem, according to Patrice Gonzalez, had to do with the constant emphasis on Madonna’s career, no matter where the couple were, or what they were doing. “It was all about her, all the time,” says Gonzalez, “and this was very off-putting to Carlos. He understood it — she was who she was, after all — but he didn’t always like it. He was a proud man. He felt overlooked.”
Patrice and other friends of Carlos report one instance — of, no doubt, many — when they were at a cocktail party with Carlos and Madonna in Manhattan and able to observe as Carlos was pushed to the background.
“They arrived together,” Patrice says, “but in a matter of moments, they were separated. The guests sort of backed off instinctively to let them pass as they walked into the room, and then they descended upon her like vultures, pushing him aside. For the next two hours, Carlos sat in the background while Madonna and her friends and associates talked endlessly about her and Evita.”
Looking preoccupied, Carlos walked over to the bar, where he joined a friend. As he leaned on the bar, a heart-shaped tattoo (with the date he first met Madonna) was noticeable on his left bicep. He also wore an expensive, crown-shaped ring, a gift from her on their first anniversary. Perhaps noticing his absence, Madonna sauntered over to him. “What’s wrong, Carlito?” she asked (“Carlito” is Carlos’s nickname).
“To be honest, I’m sick to death of hearing about Evita,” Carlos answered, quickly. “From the moment we arrived, every word has been about you and Evita,” he continued, trying to hold his temper in check. “These people don’t even know who I am, or what I do. And they don’t care.”
No doubt, Madonna had heard this complaint before from boyfriends. She knew it was difficult for any man to walk in her shadow, especially if he wasn’t also a celebrity. “I wouldn’t wish being Mr. Madonna on anybody,” she once said. Still, according to Carlos’s friend who was present, she looked a bit hurt. “Everyone else here is proud of me,” she said. “Why aren’t you?”
Carlos shook his head. “You really don’t get it, do you?” he asked, giving her a hard, knowing stare. “This isn’t about you, Madonna.”
Madonna didn’t respond. Instead, with furrowed brow, she examined the inside of her nearly empty glass, as if hoping to find the answer there.
“It wasn’t that he wasn’t proud,” said Patrice Gonzalez. “He was just tired of hearing about her and her recent achievement. He said he knew every line of every scene of that film, he had heard about it so much. Whenever they were together, the talk was always about Evita — how angry she was about something that had happened, how happy she was about something else, what a bad day she had, what a good day. Then, when the movie was over, the talk was still about it, how it had been, how she would never forget it. So, to go out in public and be surrounded by the constant chatter, it was too much for him.”
“This is your life, not mine,” Carlos said sadly, while he and Madonna stood next to each other at the bar.
“I know,” Madonna said. For a moment, her expression conveyed deep despair. Then, she shook her head in annoyance and said, “Carlos, I think you’re just being a big baby. Now, come on, have fun. I’ll tell you what,” she said with a grin. “We’ll talk only about you for the rest of the night. How’s that?”
He didn’t respond, perhaps hurt that she was making light of his frustration.
“Come on, buy me a drink,” she continued, trying to force a light moment. “My glass is empty. A lady’s glass should never be empty.”
After a silent moment which made it clear that Carlos was not in a joking — or even a drinking — mood, Madonna turned to his friend and said, “My baby is sick of me, huh?” On tiptoes, she reached up and kissed Carlos gently on the cheek. “Things will sort themselves out,” she said. Carlos’s friend recalls a tone of inevitability in Madonna’s voice, an understanding, an acceptance. “Trust me,” she said before taking her leave.
Carlos looked doubtful.
Rumors soon began to run rampant that Madonna’s relationship with Carlos Leon was over and that she had had her handlers negotiate a financial arrangement that would ensure not only his financial security but also his silence. According to the agreement, as outlined in the press, Carlos would have certain visitation rights but would have to sign documents agreeing never to seek sole custody of their child.
If her intention was to make Carlos Leon a financial offer — and, realistically, it would seem somewhat naive to believe that no such offer was made and then accepted — Madonna’s proposal would have to be a generous one. He had received numerous offers to write a book about his relationship with her, and one was for more than $3 million. Madonna was concerned when word got back to her of the possibility of a book by Carlos. However, she needn’t have worried. Leon completely rejected the offer. Loyal to her without reservation, he promised that he would never write about her, or be interviewed about her, and that she didn’t have to include such provisions in any agreement between them. “It just goes without saying,” he told her, according to a friend of his.
Madonna suspected that she could trust Carlos to say little about her — and certainly nothing negative or revealing — and, as it happened, she could do just that. Though she hadn’t always had the best judgment when it came to choosing her mates in the past, this time she realized the importance of not repeating the set of circumstances in her life that had led her to someone like Dennis Rodman. In Carlos, she chose well. According to their friends, she has become even more fully aware of his devotion to her, and genuine concern for her well-being, in the years that passed after they decided not
to marry. After the tangle of so many unhappy and turbulent relationships — Penn, Kennedy, Beatty, Ward, even Rodman — Madonna had finally hit upon one of the good guys: Carlos Leon. But as often occurs in the domain of love and romance, it wasn’t that simple. Though Carlos may have had the potential to be the ideal mate, the hard truth was that Madonna didn’t feel the kind of abiding love for him that would make it work between them — and neither did he for her.
Carlos has never spoken of any financial arrangement with Madonna if, indeed, one exists. It is the opinion of one of his friends that “Madonna and Carlos did come to terms. I heard that he was paid a few million dollars, homes in Los Angeles and New York and $100,000 a year till Lourdes was eighteen. Let’s face it. Even if that’s not completely accurate, he must have gotten something, but that’s not to say that she will be getting him jobs for the rest of his life. He doesn’t want it, and she’s not going to do it. He has a lot of pride. He considers Madonna to be one of his closest allies in the world, and even though they will probably drift apart as the years go by, they do have one thing in common, and always will: Lourdes.”
Indeed, by the time of Lourdes’s first birthday in October 1997, Carlos Leon was nowhere in sight. Instead, it was Ingrid Casares who accompanied Madonna and her daughter to watch the dolphins in an aquarium in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Leon was snapped by photographers frolicking in the Malibu surf with a bikini-clad blonde. The photographs showed the pair running around in the sand, taking a dip and kissing in what appeared to be a passionate embrace. By this time, Leon even had his own “spokesman,” Eric Weinstein, who, despite the existence of the revealing photographs, declared, “Carlos and Madonna are trying to patch things up right now.” Madonna was unhappy when she saw the pictures published in one of the tabloids — all of which she reads religiously — not because Carlos was moving on with his life, but because she felt that his being able to do so made her appear to the public to be dispensable. “You don’t go from Madonna to some little blonde chippy,” she told one of her associates. “I think Carlos should be more discreet. But what can I do? I guess he has to live his life, too.”
A year later, reporter Chris Wilson from the New York Post spotted Carlos at a party in New York passing out flyers for an upcoming independent movie, Blasphemy, in which he had a role. When Wilson asked Carlos if he still spoke to Madonna, he became incensed. “I don’t talk about my personal life!” Carlos said, angrily. “This interview is over!” Carlos then demanded that Wilson return the glossy promotional flyer he had just handed him. When Wilson hesitated about handing over the card, Carlos grabbed his arm and growled, “I’ll turn out your pockets,” and beckoned over a thuggish-looking friend, who gruffly demanded the return of the card.
Madonna’s instincts about him had been correct from the beginning. It would definitely seem that Madonna will not have to worry about Carlos Leon ever saying much to anyone about her. However, the author chanced upon Leon in a bar in the East Village, in New York in the spring of 1999, and had the opportunity to ask him a few questions. Leon said that he sees his daughter, Lourdes, “as often as I possibly can. She’s the light of my life.” He also stated that, “Madonna is the best mother in the world, and I know I can trust her with our child. But Lourdes is our child, not just hers. I hate it when writers act like I don’t exist, like Madonna is a single mother. I do exist. We’re not married, but I am involved.” When asked if there was a contractual agreement between himself and Madonna, Leon succinctly replied, “We love each other. We trust each other. More people should try it.”
Andy Bird
In many ways, the nineties had been tough, challenging years for Madonna. Even though she continued to enjoy great commercial success, she felt that the fame she had once so craved was now nothing more than a hungry and insatiable leech sucking her dry, keeping her from being truly happy. Much of her public had the false impression that, because she was famous, she also felt an incredible sense of self-fulfillment and of truly being loved. But people who are famous can tell you that the opposite is true — that if you are not truly fulfilled in your personal life, many thousands of people adoring you can actually make you feel emptier. At its worst — as it had been for Madonna — fame had become a substitute for love, a disruptive influence in her life, often giving the feeling of happiness when, really, no happiness truly existed. “I used to be so unhappy,” she said recently. “Maybe that’s why I was so, I don’t know, maybe mean to a lot of people . . . though I don’t think I’m ready to cop to that,” she added with a laugh. The birth of Lourdes helped an immeasurable amount in this regard, giving Madonna a sense of satisfaction she had never before known. “Ever since my daughter was born, I feel the fleetingness of time,” she said. “And I don’t want to waste it on getting the perfect lip color.”
She proved to be an excellent mother, says her close friend and confidante Rosie O’Donnell. “She’s a tough-love kind of mother,” says Rosie. “For instance, she doesn’t want her kid watching TV. Can you imagine that? Me, I use the television as a baby-sitter for my [four] kids. If it wasn’t for the tube, I don’t know what I would do to keep them occupied.” (As a child, Madonna was also forbidden to watch TV by her father, Tony, who felt there were better ways for a child to stay occupied.)
It’s true that Madonna insists that her daughter not watch television, saying that she doesn’t want the girl to be influenced by sexual and, also, violent images. Even though she made a career out of being an outrageous sex goddess, she believes children should be protected from such imagery. (She also says that if she ever found out that Lourdes was dating a married man, “I would have to kill her.”)
“And no junk food for Lourdes, either,” says O’Donnell. “So when that girl comes to my house to visit for the weekend, forget it! She leaves here a totally different child, a candy-bar-eating, MTV-watching, spoiled little kid. To tell you the truth,” says the comic, “I think Madonna knows how tough she is on the kid and lets her spend time at my house just to give her a break. But when she goes back to Mama, she toes the line. Then, when she visits me again, I have to start the process all over again of turning her into one of ‘my’ kids.”
In her private life, Carlos Leon had served his purpose, whether it was as a partner in a temporarily committed romance, or as just a trusted friend who was able to give her the child she so desperately desired. Now, with him all but out of the picture, she was anxious to move forward with her personal life and career.
In September 1997, Madonna embarked on what would amount to an unsteady relationship with an aspiring British actor and screenplay writer, Andy Bird, after having met him in Los Angeles through mutual friend Alek Keshishian (who directed Truth or Dare). It would be with Bird that Madonna would pick up her romantic life after Carlos Leon. While her choice in men was flawless when it came to Carlos, it seemed somewhat weaker in the choice of Andy Bird. She may be the world-famous Madonna, but she is as fallible as anyone else when it comes to choosing a mate. True, she had learned certain lessons about love and relationships along the way, and perhaps she thought she was applying them to her life when she chose to be with Andy. However, as it happened, she was mistaken.
Madonna was immediately smitten with the six-foot, two-inch Englishman who wore his light brown hair at shoulder length and always dresed in black. “It was lust at first sight,” a friend of hers revealed at the time. “Madonna calls Andy ‘Geezer.’ He isn’t exactly rolling in cash. The guy didn’t look like he had two bucks to his name, but Madonna was totally smitten. When they were together, she couldn’t keep her hands off of him.”
On the surface, it was easy to see why Madonna enjoyed Andy Bird’s company, for he is a man who genuinely appreciates women. On their first dates, he seemed intensely curious about her, seldom speaking of himself and, instead, asking thought-provoking questions about her. In doing so, he actually became more of an enigma in their early relationship than she was. Soon, Madonna found herself immensely intrigued by h
is sense of mystery. Based on what she had heard about him through mutual friends, he was also a man of wide sexual experience, though he rarely spoke of any of it. His discretion in that regard fascinated Madonna, who is old-fashioned in that she considers it chivalrous of a man when he doesn’t kiss and tell. Also, that particular characteristic would bode well for any man in a relationship with a celebrity of her stature, she must have reasoned.
Soon after meeting Andy Bird, Madonna jetted to London for a two-month mission to search for a house there, saying that she felt that Britain was a safer place in which to raise her daughter. “I have really fallen in love with it,” she said. “I’ve made some excellent friends in London and even thought about my daughter going to school here. I think the British are more intelligent than Americans.” With her affair with Bird flourishing under the media’s watchful eye, they moved into a rented house in Chelsea. Twice, Bird drove Madonna miles to visit his parents in Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare’s birthplace. Bird’s parents accompanied the couple to lunch at a local pub.
In what some of her friends called “record time,” Bird and Madonna rented a 4,500 pounds a week house in Chelsea, while Madonna looked for a permanent home in London. Then, when she needed to return to Los Angeles on business, he moved into her Los Feliz home. He told one London-based reporter, “I’m living over there now and trying my luck as a film director.”
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