Here is superstar Madonna as you have never seen her before. Newly unearthed pictures and video show the Queen of Pop before she took the music world by storm.
A candid documentary uses archive footage and previously unheard audio of the woman who would dominate the charts for decades.
It begins when Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone dropped out of college in 1978 and arrived in New York, aged 19, after catching a plane and a taxi for the very first time.
Four short years later, the teenage runaway from Michigan had her first hit record and was on her way to becoming the legend she is today.
“Becoming Madonna” is an unofficial documentary directed by Michael Ogden.
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In it the star herself recalls turning up in the Big Apple with a suitcase full of dreams and not much else.
“I arrived with $35 in my pocket. It was the bravest thing I have ever done,” she says.
The now 66-year-old multi-award-winning global megastar admits she wasn’t always popular.
“I always felt like an outsider. I could never fit in,” she tells the camera.
The documentary tracks the Like a Virgin singer from her humble career beginnings in New York in 1978 through to 1992, following her many musical reinventions along the way.
Then came the release of her notorious Sex in 1992, a coffee table book of raunchy images of the star which caused outrage at the time.
Then there were her marriages, firstly to actor Sean Penn, above, at the height of her chart fame, followed by her relationship with Hollywood lothario Warren Beatty.
And there was marriage number two to British film-maker Guy Ritchie. Suddenly the American superstar had swapped her sexy lace and leather stage outfits for country tweeds as she enjoyed shooting weekends in the English countryside with the Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels director.
The documentary also looks at the death of her mother, also called Madonna, when the singer was just five, and the death of brother Christopher from pancreatic cancer last year, as well as
close friend Martin Burgoyne at the height of the Aids epidemic.
Christopher Ciccone is heard saying: “She was our mother’s namesake. It either crushes you or it elevates you.”
● Becoming Madonna is on Sky Documentaries and NOW from Monday.
