When Madonna was nominated for a ‘Worst Actress’ Razzie for a 1991 documentary
Madonna has had a long and rather varied career.
On one hand, she’s the legendary artist who changed music forever, her roots in New York’s underground scene paving the way for her groundbreaking approach to creating subversive pop music in the mainstream, and then there’s Madonna, the failed movie star.
In 1979, the future singer would lend herself to the art film A Certain Sacrifice, although this wouldn’t be released until 1985, the same year in which she’d appear in Susan Seildelman’s hit film Desperately Seeking Susan. The movie, which emerged in the wake of her best-selling album Like a Virgin, showed a promising side to Madonna as an actor.
That sadly wouldn’t last, as Madonna would then go on to appear in some terribly received movies, like Shanghai Surprise, Who’s That Girl, Bloodhounds of Broadway, and perhaps worst of all, Body of Evidence. Most of these films were considered vanity projects, with Madonna showing little capability in giving impressive performances, and yet, with her status in the industry, it was seemingly going to take a lot to stop her.
To be fair, Madonna did give a good performance every now and then, like when she starred in Dick Tracy, A League of Their Own, and Evita, the latter winning her a Golden Globe, but she was never going to become a proper Hollywood actor because she simply had too many flops to her name, her Razzies record proving as much.
She stands as the most successful Golden Raspberry ‘Worst Actress’ winner, with five Razzies to her name, while she has nine in total spanning other categories, too. With 16 nominations overall, Madonna is a Razzie champion, which is not exactly anything to be proud of, but even worse is the fact that one of these was simply for being herself.
Madonna appeared in the documentary Madonna: Truth or Dare in 1991, which was largely well-reviewed for its honest and revealing portrayal of the singer during her Blond Ambition World Tour, but not everyone was convinced, like the Golden Raspberry judges, who saw her attempt at presenting a certain version of herself to the cameras so offensive that they could only deem her performance worthy of a bad acting award. Everything about the singer does feel strangely contrived within the documentary, even the scene where she visits her mother’s grave and lies down next to it, wondering what she looks like now (“Just a bunch of dust,” she says).
With clips of Madonna taking to the stage or walking through paparazzi in slow motion interspersed between these shots, it all feels rather performative and inauthentic. In another scene, Madonna controversially laughs at the news that her makeup artist believes she was drugged and raped. The singer certainly doesn’t come across super well in the documentary, but it’s hard to tell who the ‘real’ Madonna is. How much of her persona is put on for the camera, even in a documentary? Would a male rock star receive a ‘Worst Actor’ Razzie nomination for acting similarly?
Madonna: Truth or Dare by no means shows the best side of the icon, but it’s a fascinating portrait of a pop star nonetheless, one who the whole world was watching, and one who has always had to perform, for better or for worse, out of self-preservation.
