Madonna

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  Now nearly forty years old, Madonna had also unveiled a new physical image that included the wearing of togas and saris, and veils over long, flowing dark tresses. Gone were her come-hither looks and her underwear worn as outerwear. Now, she was photographed with reflective expressions on her face, heavenly winds whipping through her hair. Her face was retouched to give it the bronzed, flawless complexion one would perhaps expect to see only on an angel. Still, Madonna strongly objected to the perception that she was constantly reinventing herself. “I’d rather think that I’m slowly revealing myself, my true nature,” she said. “It feels to me like I’m just getting closer to the core of who I really am.”

  With the critical raves for and commercial success of Ray of Light, Madonna’s image transformation proved to be another triumph. Oddly, in her fifteen years of fame, she’d only received one Grammy, and that was for Best Video back in 1991. (It’s not unusual for acclaimed artists never to receive a Grammy award. Madonna was in good company with the Beatles and Diana Ross, among other notables.) However, the stars were once again in her favor, and with a new career and image Madonna would earn four Grammys at the Los Angeles ceremony at the Shrine Auditorium in February 1999 (during which she performed “Nothing Really Matters” in a dazzling red kimono, oriental-style makeup and straight black hair) — Best Pop Album, Best Dance Recording, Best Short Form Music Video and Best Record Packaging. (The next year, at the 2000 Grammys, Madonna added another award to her collection when she won for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture: “Beautiful Stranger” from the film Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.)

  Although Ray of Light was well received — as was the newer, more mature Madonna — her plans for a tour were put on hold while she concentrated on her movie career. In 1998, she was close to signing a contract to star with Goldie Hawn in the high-budget film version of the Broadway musical Chicago (which never materialized) and had already signed to star in a romantic comedy, The Next Best Thing, starring Rupert Everett, fresh from his smash success in My Best Friend’s Wedding , a commercially successful Julia Roberts vehicle. The new script — which Everett brought to Madonna’s attention — took the secondary story of My Best Friend’s Wedding — a straight woman/gay man friendship — and brought it to the forefront. In The Next Best Thing , the two friends enjoy one night of intoxicated intimacy and decide to go with the resulting pregnancy and raise the child together.

  Once again, though, Madonna’s film career would prove to be less than lustrous. When The Next Best Thing was finally released (on March 3, 2000), the movie would be attacked as viciously as anything she had ever done in the past. Under the headline “Her Best Is Bad,” the New York Post stated, “There hasn’t been a movie as smug or cheesy as The Next Best Thing in quite a while.” It would go on to criticize, “For the first half of the movie, Madonna speaks with an unexplained English accent that draws attention to the singer’s apparent inability to read a line.” USA Today would be more succinct in its analysis: “Madonna still can’t act.” (She would have a hit record, however, with the song “American Pie,” a version of the 1971 Don McLean pop classic which Madonna recorded for The Next Best Thing.)

  “I think half of my movies have been good and half have been shit,” she has said of her film career. “I’ve got two things working against me. One is that I’m really successful in another area and it’s really hard for people to let you cross into anything else. Also, because I was in a series of really bad movies, it has given people a license to say, ‘Oh, she can’t act. She can’t do this, she can’t do that.’ But, honestly, I can think of Academy Award – winning actors and actresses who have done more shit movies than I have.”

  Exit: Andy Bird

  A major schism in Madonna’s relationship with Andy Bird occurred in October 1998 when he made a few choice but innocuous comments about her to the press. “[We have] a fiery relationship, but it’s worth working on,” Bird told the Daily Mail. “I’ve got a responsibility towards Lourdes . . . and towards Madonna.” Madonna telephoned him when she read the comment and became quite emotional. She felt betrayed, she said. She was surprised, as well, because she still hoped he would be more discreet when it came to talking about their life together.

  “If I can’t trust the people I sleep with, who can I trust?” she asked. Bird denied that he had even talked to the reporter and apologized profusely for the fact that the news had rattled her. However, once Madonna feels that a person has betrayed her trust, it is difficult for her ever again to fully trust that person. “She can be open, until she feels that you let her down and said something about her publicly that you shouldn’t have said,” observed her now former manager Freddy DeMann. “Once that happens, forget it. She never really trusts you again. Especially if you talked to the press. . . .” (In 1997, after fourteen years as her manager, DeMann became chief executive of Madonna’s Maverick label. Then, in 1998, after much publicized and unfortunate legal wrangling, DeMann left Maverick; Madonna settled with him for $20 million.)

  Contrite, Andy Bird hopped on a transatlantic flight to New York and — one might wonder why he would do this — told reporters at the airport that he wanted to patch up his relationship with Madonna. “It’s worth working on and I’m certainly not going all the way to New York to have a fight with her,” he said.

  Despite the truce that they called, Madonna was ambivalent about Andy Bird. In many ways, the relationship must have reminded her of the ones she had had with musicians in her early New York days. She had cared about those men, too, but felt that their potential to achieve as much in their lives as she had in hers was limited. Though she often seemed to end up in relationships in which she made more money than her boyfriends — Carlos Leon being the most recent — that wasn’t a problem for her anymore. “It is perfectly socially acceptable for a man to find a beautiful girl who hasn’t accomplished the things that he’s accomplished, and make a life with her,” she told American Vogue. “Why does the man always have to be the one who makes more money? It’s pathetic and sexist and disgusting, and if people don’t change the way they view this thing — the man and woman’s place in society — nothing’s ever going to change.” For Madonna, the issue wasn’t a financial one as much as it was that she felt Andy Bird was not motivated to do with his career what she felt he should do with it. She has such great initiative and drive, she can’t help but to be judgmental about those who she feels don’t match her in that regard. Also, as she once told Tony Ward, she needed more from a relationship. Again, whatever it was that was going to make it permanent between Madonna and a man simply wasn’t there with this one.

  “I can’t be what you want me to be,” Andy said to her at a party in Los Angeles in front of witnesses. As usual these days, she was dressed down, in a satin shift with a long hemline, a cardigan sweater and slip-on Fendi shoes. She looked so “normal,” it was difficult for some onlookers to believe she was really the Madonna.

  “I’m not expecting you to be what I want you to be,” Madonna shot back. “Just find some direction . . . please!”

  “I am who I am,” he said, shifting from foot to foot. His response seemed weak, even to the most casual observer.

  “Well, maybe that’s not good enough for me,” Madonna countered. “I’ve been around the block too many times for this kind of bullshit.” As she walked away, she added, “I want another child, but I want to give birth to it. Not date it.”

  It was true that, by this time, Madonna had decided that she wanted another baby. She enjoyed motherhood. “I have memories of sitting on my mother’s lap,” she remembers, “or lying next to her in bed and having her arms around me. I know how much I cherish those memories. I do have moments with Lola [Lourdes] when I can almost feel transposed back to those times. I don’t so much see my mother mothering me as I think, I’m going to be the mother I never had.”

  There had been a short time after the birth of “Lola” when Madonna wondered if she had made the right decision about havi
ng a child. For years, she had lived a selfish, egocentric life — she knew it, even sang about it on her Ray of Light CD. She had become so accustomed to the independence afforded by success and wealth, it had even been difficult for Madonna to compromise her wants and needs for the sake of a relationship with a man. For most of her life, she, and she alone, was her greatest and only concern. Every decision she had made — particularly as an adult, and about her career — had to do with what suited her needs best. Would she like to sleep late after an exhausting public appearance? Why not? A vacation with a new boyfriend to some far-off land for an exotic weekend? Certainly. Did she really want to clean out the hallway closet floor covered in Prada heels to make room for baby toys? Doubtful.

  Then she gave birth to Lourdes. “Well, that changed everything,” she explained in one interview. “It was a tough adjustment, and she really didn’t know if she could do it,” said a friend of hers. “She said, ‘My God, I’m a terrible mother. I’m selfish. This baby is crying, and all I can think about is that I have to finance this video.’ But when she relaxed into it, she realized that, ‘No, this is what I want to do, not what I have to do.’”

  Indeed, with the birth of Lourdes, Madonna experienced a rebirth of her own. She had always suspected that she would probably be a capable mother, but she was truly stunned by her capacity to love her daughter. As she would tell it, she was amazed by her devotion to Lourdes. It had impacted her, informed who she was as a person, as a woman. It gave her a sense of purpose much wider in scope than just show business, and also a sense of satisfaction she had never before experienced in her life. Whether she liked it or not, there were — and are — days when her superstar plans don’t matter; Lola’s needs come first. Of course, there was also something esteem-building about her ability to be a good parent. After all, it made her proud of herself, made her feel good about herself. “Like any woman — I’m no different — I had to come to terms with the fact that I am not the most important person in my world any longer,” she concluded.

  Now, Madonna wanted to give Lourdes a brother or sister. Again, she found herself in a familiar predicament. She wanted a baby. Should she wait to find a suitable partner? No. She was too impatient to do that. She asked Carlos Leon if he was interested in having another child. However, he said he wasn’t so inclined, explaining that, emotionally, one child was all he could claim responsibility for at this time.

  As usually happens in Madonna’s life, as soon as she sets her mind on a goal, the media somehow seems to be in on the scheme. Stories that Madonna was interested in having another baby, though not looking for a husband, began materializing earlier in 1998 when the British press reported that she had wanted Bird to be the father.

  “How do they always know exactly what I’m thinking and what I’m doing?” she asked one of her advisers of the British media. “If I miss a period, the first thing I feel I should do is read the News of the World to find out if I’m pregnant.”

  In fact, ironically, just days after she had officially ended it with Andy Bird, Madonna learned that she was pregnant. This was bad timing for her. Those who know her best say that as much as she wanted a child, she was now completely uncertain about the suitability of Andy as a father. After all, she had to plan on a long-term relationship with whoever it was who fathered her next baby. Whereas she was on good terms with Carlos Leon, her relationship with Andy Bird was strained and difficult. “She wasn’t sure she wanted him in the picture any longer,” says one of her closest friends. “Still, when she found that she was pregnant, she knew she would have to figure out how to get along with the baby’s father, Andy Bird. An abortion was out of the question,” reports that friend. “Not at this time in her life, at this stage of the game when she was wanting to have babies, not get rid of them. Someone suggested an abortion, and she said, ‘Absolutely not. Those days are over. I would never have another abortion, not after giving birth. Forget it.’”

  It appeared as if she would have to find a way to patch things up with Andy Bird, and even somehow make him a permanent part of her life. This would not be easy for Madonna. Once she is finished with someone, she’s completely finished with that person. It’s difficult for her to allow back into her life a person who has fallen out of her good graces. It’s rarely — if ever — happened.

  While attempting to sort out complex emotions having to do with Andy Bird as a constant in her life, the difficult decision was made for her — by Mother Nature. Madonna miscarried in her seventh week.

  It isn’t known if she told Bird of the pregnancy or not. Some of the couple’s friends insist that she did — and that he was two days away from a trip to America to be at her side when she miscarried and told him to cancel his trip. Others say that her ever reliable instincts told her to wait awhile before informing Bird of her condition — and that she was glad she had done just that when the information was no longer relevant.

  She was unhappy about the miscarriage, naturally. She was also somewhat relieved. She knew that she wanted another baby — and that she wanted to at least like the father, if not be madly in love with him.

  Enter: Guy Ritchie

  Throughout her life, it has always seemed that elements of chance and circumstance have aligned themselves in such a way that Madonna usually gets exactly what she wants when she wants it. Or, maybe it’s just that once she sets her mind on a goal, there’s simply no stopping her until she achieves it.

  At just about the time Madonna decided she wanted another child, she became serious about English filmmaker Guy Ritchie, ten years her junior and the director of the popular British film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Madonna had first met Ritchie at a weekend gathering in summer 1998, hosted by Sting’s wife, Trudie Styler (a major investor in Lock, Stock, along with Peter Martin and Stephen Marks) at their fifty-two-acre country estate in Wiltshire. Ritchie later admitted that the prime reason he went to the party was to meet Madonna, “so he must have had something on his mind,” Madonna observed, laughing. (Madonna would eventually agree to release the soundtrack to Ritchie’s film on her Maverick Records, so maybe what he had in mind was just some old-fashioned show-business “networking.”)

  Madonna enjoyed a brief relationship with Guy at that time — found him to be “cocky and charming.” However, she felt the same about Guy’s producer, Matthew Vaughn, the wealthy son of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. star Robert Vaughn. “And he fancied her rotten [in the worst way] for years,” Guy Ritchie has said.

  While Madonna wondered about Matthew and Guy, she continued her relationship with Andy Bird. It wasn’t long before word of Madonna’s brief dalliance with Ritchie reached Bird. Predictably, he was upset about what was going on behind his back with Guy Ritchie. Madonna’s brief affair with Guy had a certain irony to it, actually; Bird had earlier accused her of having an affair with another British filmmaker, a man in whom she really was not interested. He was so certain that Madonna would one day be unfaithful to him, his prophecy became a reality.

  At this time, Guy was in a long-term relationship with model and TV presenter Rebecca Green, the daughter of a British tycoon, Carlton TV chief Michael Green. Rebecca had helped Guy produce his first film, a short called Hard Case. She had also persuaded her mother and stepfather, wealthy banker Gilbert de Botton, to invest in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels; therefore Guy was, as one of his friends put it, “in deep with her.” However, as Guy became famous, she became impatient with the succession of models he began dating on the side, until finally either she, or he (depending on whose story one believes), ended the relationship.

  In the first weeks of 1999, Madonna and Guy began to be seen in public together — coinciding with the press reports that she was yearning for a new baby. At the time, Guy had just ended his relationship with Rebecca Green, who says that her relationship with Ritchie “came to a natural end,” but adds, “Madonna was knocking about and that probably had something to do with it. We still speak,” she says of Guy. “I’m not going to sa
y when the last time was, because that’s a bit of a sore one — not for me, but for her [Madonna]. I’ve got to be a bit kind.”

  Like Madonna, Guy Ritchie has been accused of rewriting his life story, perhaps for dramatic purposes. So, as with Madonna, one should always take what Ritchie says about his past with the proverbial grain of salt. He is savvy enough to know that coming from the streets projects a more interesting, and even sexier, image than being raised upper class. (Or, as he wrote in the dialogue for one of his characters in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels , men from the upper class have “mincey faggot balls” and are “poofs. Soft as shite . . . faggots.”) “I’ve lived in the East End for thirty years,” he was quoted as saying in 1999. “I’ve been in a load of mess-ups . . . I’ve been poor all of my life . . .”

  *

  Guy Ritchie is, in fact, the son of upper-middle-class parents. His father, John, had followed his own father from Sandhurst into the Seaforth Highlanders (a regiment of the British Army), after which he became an advertising executive, responsible for the Hamlet cigar advertisements. (Guy’s grandfather, Major Stewart Ritchie, was a military hero, killed in action in 1940 after the 2nd Seaforth Highlanders were ordered to remain on French soil while most British forces were evacuated at Dunkirk.)

  Ritchie’s mother, Amber, is a former model.

  Born in 1968 in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, Guy Ritchie lived with his parents and sister, Tabitha, in Fulham, West London. When he was five, his parents divorced and, shortly thereafter, Amber married Sir Michael Leighton, the eleventh holder of a 300-year-old baronetcy who once boasted of having had “104 affairs.” Guy then went on to live a privileged life in the English countryside. He grew up at the seventeenth-century Loton Park near Shrewsbury, a manor house belonging to his stepfather.