How Madonna is fighting back after her collapse – and why she refuses to be defined by her age as she turns 65

LOVE her or loathe her (and we adore her), no one on the planet can ignore Madonna Louise Ciccone.

As she celebrates her 65th birthday in just 10 days’ time, the global superstar is back on top form – and hell-bent on breaking all the rules around what it means to be the fiercest, most fabulous pensioner in pop.

Just weeks ago, though, she reportedly almost died from a horrific bacterial infection, which saw her collapse at her New York home with suspected septic shock on June 24.

Now, ahead of her much-anticipated world tour, she is determined to show us all she is fitter than ever, despite calls from her family to slow down.

“I’m on the road to recovery,” she said in a statement just days after reports alleged she’d been found unresponsive and had to be “revived with Narcan”, before being rushed to hospital for emergency treatment. “I’ll be back with you as soon as I can!”

According to a friend, who is a regular visitor at her sumptuous Upper East Side home (made up of three interconnecting apartments), Madonna is already back in the gym, focusing on “intelligent strength and low-impact body work” and eating regular meals of high-energy, macrobiotic, alkaline, plant-based food prepared by her vegan chef. 

‘In her seventh decade, she’s still enraging her critics’

The friend reveals: “Madonna actually shocked herself with her health issues.

“But she has had her trainers and nutritionists review her whole exercise and eating methods.

“She wants to be stronger and fitter than ever to face the years ahead.

“She’s including more weights, less cardio – a more long-term, intelligent, sustainable regime.

“She accepts she can’t continually run at the same pace she has since her 20s, but she doesn’t want to change her activity levels, particularly on stage.

“She’s now obsessed with the way Mick Jagger, who recently turned 80, has looked after himself and how he builds up to a tour.

“She wants to emulate that, so she can really deliver when performing.”

Having met and interviewed Madonna many times, I can guarantee there will be no stopping the Material Girl as she prepares to prove that 65 is just another chance for another major reinvention.

At 50, she told me: “I’m never going to be defined by age. Men can use age as a stick to beat women with – you’re a nobody after the age of 45.

“But I will never be a nobody. I will never give in to someone else’s idea of how a woman should be, how a woman should look, what a woman’s sexuality should be like, how a woman should age or how she should behave.

“I don’t follow rules. I break rules. I make my own rules.”

While many of us would be thinking about retiring at 65, Madonna has no plans to put her feet up and relax. 

With her rescheduled The Celebration Tour set to kick off on October 14 in London, collaborations with The Weeknd and Sam Smith under her belt, and a movie of her life in the works, Madonna has vowed to: “Look forward to many more years of subversive behaviour – pushing boundaries, standing up to the patriarchy and, most of all, enjoying life!”

The tour – which celebrates her four decades in showbusiness – is a retrospective of her greatest hits, from Holiday to Vogue to Erotica, with Madonna asking fans to suggest their favourite songs for her set list.

“It will be the most exciting show yet,” she has promised.

Now in her seventh decade, she’s as subversive as ever, with her penchant for explicit language, sex-shop underwear and those infamous semi-naked poses on her social media accounts still enraging her critics.

Piers Morgan has described the singer as “a hot mess who should be put out to pasture”, but Madonna has drawn praise from leading feminist academic Camille Paglia, who describes her as “the future of feminism”. 

And what a career she’s had. Over the years, Madonna – mother to Lourdes, now 26 (with Carlos Leon) and Rocco, 22 (with film director Guy Ritchie), and adoptive mother to Malawian-born David, 17, Mercy, 17, and 10-year-old twins Stella and Estere – has sold 300 million albums and more than 100 million singles.

She’s completed 11 sold-out concert tours and grossed £1.7billion in tour revenue, broken 26 world records and won seven Grammys and two Golden Globe awards.

She has also appeared in 26 movies, founded her own record company, Maverick Records, and film company, Maverick Films, as well as a production company, aptly called Semtex Girls.

Crucially, it was Madonna – by refusing to be a pop puppet and insisting on taking control of her career, her finances and her image – who paved the way for recent female superstars, from Beyoncé and Lady Gaga to Taylor Swift.

‘Madonna has always been, and always will be, hardcore’

Last year, after she and Beyoncé released their surprise Queens Remix of Break My Soul, Bey paid tribute to the singer by sharing an emotional note she’d written to Madonna.

“Thank you, queen,” she wrote, “I’m so grateful for you. You have opened so many doors for so many women. You’re a masterpiece genius.”

“Madonna – or M as we call her – loves nothing more than to shock people,” a close New York friend of hers tells me.

“She started out by getting banned by the Pope for using crucifixes in her videos, but the older she’s got the more liberated and unapologetic she has become.

“As a woman, as an artist and as a performer, she believes in waking people up to the possibility that you can own your own life, create your own destiny and just keep on breaking those rules.

“It gets her into trouble every now and again, but she’s hardcore.

“Always was. Always will be. She just gets up again and keeps on going.

“After her recent hospitalisation, everyone was terrified that it was the end.

“But pretty much the day she woke up, she was talking about her tour.

“Doctors were telling her to slow down, her family was telling her to rest, but Madonna just said: ‘I’ll work more smart.’

“Nothing will ever stop her. She’s just reinventing the way she approaches things.”

The middle child of six, Madonna was raised by her strict Catholic Italian dad Tony and stepmum Joan, after her namesake mother died from breast cancer at the age of 30, when she was just five. 

The working-class girl from Michigan was, according to a talent scout around at the time: “A reasonable dancer and a reasonable singer, but nothing special”.

Indeed, her most significant gift, when she rocked up in New York in 1978, aged 20, was her “ambition the size of a planet and a brain as sharp as a samurai sword”, according to a critic at the time.

A born hustler, she set about making connections with street artists and musicians.

She set up bands, tried her hand at acting and landed herself a record deal.

By 24, her first single, Everybody, was released, followed by her self-titled debut album, and by 1984 – with her trademark cut-off leggings, lace gloves and bejewelled crucifixes, she was on her way to becoming the biggest female star in the world.

Madonna has been through many transformations, both personally and professionally – from Material Girl to Jogging Queen to dominatrix to Madam X.

The twice-married star has also had a slew of A list lovers, and in recent years her boyfriends have largely consisted of dancers in their 20s or early 30s.

‘As a youngster, Madonna was a born rebel’

“It’s just what happens,” the singer told New York Daily News in 2017.

“Most men my age are married with children. They’re not dateable.

“I’m a very adventurous person and I also have a crazy life. I’m a single mother. I have four children.

“I mean, you have to be pretty open-minded and adventurous to want to step into my world.

“People who are older and more set in their ways, are probably not as adventurous as someone younger.”

In truth, Madonna’s relationship with both herself and her partners have always been more complicated than that.

As a smart youngster with a dominating strict father, a conventional stepmum and a mother who was just a memory, Madonna was a born rebel.

We first met back in 1992, when she released her taboo-breaking Sex book, featuring naked photographs of her alongside her then-lover, rapper Vanilla Ice, and supermodel Naomi Campbell.

Every time we’ve met since, the drill has always been the same.

She starts off by being dominating and confrontational, occasionally rolling her eyes or refusing to answer questions.

Then, if you don’t crumble before her eyes, she cracks a smile, she likes to laugh – ideally, you should make her laugh by telling her something entertaining – and then she opens up. 

She is always intelligent, thought-provoking and philosophical.

And every time I have met her throughout her 30s, 40s and 50s, she has always spoken about her mother and motherhood.

In 2001, I asked her how she defined herself. “A pop star,” she replied, then laughed – it was clear she considered herself so much more.

“An artist, a mother and a woman,” she went on. I then asked her to put them in order of priority.

“Not one comes first, all three together, because each informs the other,” she explained.

We talked about motherhood – how she was haunted by the loss of her own mother and how that loss had driven her as a child to be a rebel then as an adult to be a star.

In her teens and early 20s, she had decided never to have children. Then at 28, she gave birth to Lourdes. 

“I had never doubted myself up until that point in my life,” she told me.

“And then I missed my mother more. I questioned myself all the time. ‘Am I doing the right thing?’

“I wanted my daughter to be smart and to learn languages. I am a strict mother. But I want her to know she is loved.

“And I want her to be her own woman. I want all women to know that. It made me want to break more rules.”

Every decade of Madonna’s life has – in career terms – been golden.

She has continued to tour, to release albums, to remain culturally relevant and to work with new artists, from Beyoncé to Nicki Minaj, M.I.A and Sam Smith.

She’s an active advocate of gay rights, transgender issues and feminist causes.

She has always publicly supported her fellow female performer and friend Britney Spears – last year she attended her wedding to Sam Asghari and even re-enacted their controversial 2003 MTV Video Music Awards moment by kissing her on the lips.

‘If she wants to look younger, it’s her right to have surgery’

While many, including Donald Trump, have criticised Madonna for her outrageous on-and-off-stage behaviour, in her latter years she has faced increasing attacks on her physical appearance.

When she appeared at the Grammys in February this year, her unlined face appeared puffy and distorted by what people assumed to be recent cosmetic surgery.

It led to global headlines damning her for her appearance.

Unapologetic as ever, Madonna – who has admitted to undergoing cosmetic surgery – challenged the reaction by putting out a statement to her 19 million Instagram followers.

“Once again, I am caught in the glare of ageism and misogyny that permeates the world we live in,” she said.

“A world that refuses to celebrate women past the age of 45 and feels the need to punish her if she continues to be strong-willed, hard-working and adventurous.”

“Madonna is not going to go gently into the night,” her friend says.

“She is not going to grow old gracefully. If she wants to look younger, it is her right to do what she wants.

“If she can pay for good surgery, that’s her right. She’s not hurting anyone.

“You are talking about a woman who has always taken control of her image. 

“She may be 65, but she can still look hot, she can still be sexy, she can still be Madonna.”

So, happy birthday, Madge. We salute you. Or as she herself says: “Bow down, bitches.”