MADONNA
Singer, performer, actress. Born Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone in Bay City,
Michigan, on August 16, 1958, to parents Silvio "Tony" Ciccone and Madonna
Fortin. Tony, the son of Italian immigrants, was the first of his family to go
to college, where he earned a degree in engineering. Madonna's mother, an x-ray
technician and former dancer, was of French Canadian descent. After their
marriage in 1955, the couple moved to Pontiac, Michigan, to be close to Tony's
job as a defense engineer. Madonna was born three years later, during a visit
with family in Bay City. The third of six children, Madonna learned early on how
to handle her role as the middle child, admitting that she was "the sissy of the
family" who often used her feminine wiles to get her way.
Her parents' strict observation of the Catholic faith played a large role in
Madonna's childhood. "My mother was a religious zealot," Madonna explains.
"There were always priests and nuns in my house growing up." Many elements of
Catholic iconography—including her mother's statues of the Sacred Heart, the
habits of the nuns at her Catholic elementary school, and the Catholic altar at
which she and her family prayed daily—later became the subject of Madonna's most
controversial works.