Few people have reached the heights of fame quite like Madonna. With her signature provocative style and penchant for reinvention, the singer and actor has achieved household-name status for almost 45 years.
She recently released her 15th studio album, Confessions II, which debuted at number one on both the US Billboard 200 and the ARIA Albums Chart in Australia. She opened the headline-grabbing halftime show at the FIFA World Cup Final in July, and this month Seven is streaming Madonna & Graham, a sit-down interview with Graham Norton – featuring a Kylie Minogue cameo (she collaborated with the star on a new song, (Love Sensation).
But before the lace gloves, conical bras, Grammy awards, fan adoration and world tours, Madonna Louise Ciccone was just an ordinary girl with big dreams. The third of eight children, she was a straight-A student from Michigan who loved to dance.
She attributes much of her ambition to the loss of her mother to breast cancer when she was five years old, alongside a very real fear of being “mediocre”. She moved to New York City in 1978 and worked in an array of part-time jobs, while making an early foray into music and acting.
Having landed a record deal in 1982, she released her first album, Madonna, the following year. But it was her second album, Like a Virgin, released in November 1984, that catapulted her to superstardom. Then came Desperately Seeking Susan and a character whose look would become synonymous with Madonna.
Desperately seeking the role
If you haven’t seen the film before, or want to watch it again for nostalgia’s sake, you can stream Desperately Seeking Susan for free right now on Tubi.
It’s about free-spirited New Yorker Susan (Madonna) who shares hook-up dates via newspaper personal ads with her sometimes-boyfriend, Jim (Robert Joy). But things go awry when bored housewife Roberta (Rosanna Arquette) starts following the ads and goes to their rendezvous, only to find herself inadvertently flung into Susan’s crazy world.
Mistaken for Susan, she’s stalked by Wayne (Will Patton) and finds comfort in the arms of Dez (Aidan Quinn) but has no memory of how she got there. All the while, Susan attempts to find Roberta and reclaim what’s hers.
According to the film’s director, Susan Seidelman, in her 2024 memoir Desperately Seeking Something, Madonna wanted the role of Susan so badly that she suggestively told Orion Pictures executive Barbara Boyle that she’d “do anything to get this part”. Boyle had replied, “Sorry, I’m heterosexual” and Madonna had quipped back, “How do you know unless you try?”
She was paid just US$80,000 and was chosen over Melanie Griffith, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kim Cattrall and Jennifer Jason Leigh for the part. Most of the clothing she wore in the film – lace gloves, mesh tops, layered jewellery and underwear as outerwear – came directly from her own wardrobe. By blending her authentic East Village thrift-store finds with pop attitude, the resulting street-chick look inspired a generation and cemented her as a bona fide fashion icon.
Susan makes bank
Madonna was relatively unknown when she started filming Desperately Seeking Susan. In fact, several people misidentified her as Cyndi Lauper on set. But by the time the film premiered in March 1985, Madonna was already a major star.
She’d released her second studio album, Like a Virgin, in November 1984, right in the middle of the nine-and-a-half-week New York shoot for the film.
To take full advantage of the hype, the production company rushed to feature her more prominently across its marketing – and it paid off big time. The US$5 million budget film went on to gross US$27 million in the United States alone.
In the famous club scene at the real-life New York venue Danceteria, Madonna’s as-yet unreleased single Into the Groove was added to the film because Seidelman needed a track for the dance sequence. It was a standalone single and didn’t appear on the film’s soundtrack.
It also wasn’t featured on Like a Virgin but was hastily added to subsequent 1985 international releases, which means that if you have an Australian copy of the album, it’s likely that Into the Groove is indeed featured.
A happy ending
The film went on to receive several award nominations, including a BAFTA win for Rosanna Arquette. In 2023, Desperately Seeking Susan was recognised by the United States Library of Congress for its cultural significance and added to the esteemed National Film Registry.
After the worldwide success of the film, Madonna went on to star in more than 40 more, including Evita (for which she won a Golden Globe award), A League of Their Own, Dick Tracy and she also acted in the Broadway show Speed-the-Plow.
Now, at the age of 68, Madonna continues to evolve and contribute to the cultural conversation while also inspiring a new generation of talented artists. Desperately Seeking Susan didn’t just launch her career – it gave her a template.
Susan’s spirit of fearless authenticity became Madonna’s lifelong signature, and she continues to push the limits of her identity with the same unapologetic freedom that makes her character in the film impossible to forget.
Desperately Seeking Susan is available to stream on Tubi for free.