Why Madonna is worthy of being the first star to have a bronze statue of her likeness standing on Hollywood Boulevard

By creammagazine, March 5, 2026

This photograph is pertinent in so many ways. Every element of it looks as if it were positioned / posited / mis-en-scened to the Nth degree – as though Ryan Murphy himself had directed and post-produced it. It’s what Hollywood should look like today. Clear-skyed. Glossy. Its vintage sign not faded, just weathered enough to look classic-fabulous. The main attraction 45 degrees south-west of it, Madonna possessing possibly the most famous face in pop culture history.

Madonna has sung for film many a time – won an Oscar for one of them. She hanky-pankied her way up the music ladder but found the film industry’s climb was splintered with more sordidity and caveats than even she could cope with. She just wanted to be up on that big screen and display some good old-fashioned glamour and fun. But even this aspiring actress wouldn’t s#ck certain d1ck to get where the likes of Marilyn and Mae got. Although she did borrow lots from the big dress-up box of Studios Conglomerated, injecting classic Tinseltown looks into her music videos and album covers.

She’s been in some pretty good movies (Evita, Desperately Seeking Susan) and some very bad ones (Body of Evidence, Shanghai Surprise) and a couple of flicks that ought never have even made it outside of the editing suite (Who’s That Girl, and the very early A Certain Sacrifice in which she had an egg fried on her stomach). But you’ll see none of these in those 1001-Movies-You-Must-See-Before-You-Die tomes.

The palm trees on either side of the above picture are perfectly aligned, like backup dancers in one of the icon’s videos, but here she is the main attraction, just left off centre, holding big red scissors and having the final cut – a music industry martinet but the movie industry’s she-looks-good-but-can-she-act? excuse to avoid auditions altogether and just assume she couldn’t give as good as Garbo, Detriech or even Brando. She could, if there were strong enough a director.

Madonna might never have had an all-access pass to the big Hollywood after-party (and who would want one now that the film city’s reputation has a certain tarnish?). She may not be celebrated for her celluloid contributions, or dollied up on promotional posters plastered along the Boulevard, but she does wear the pants when it comes to being in control of her image and reputation. Sometimes that image is made a mockery of on newer media like TikTok and Facetagram (by her own hand, mostly) but when you look at the bigger picture, Madonna is one of the only stars whose name you could mention anywhere in the world – from Tokyo to Tanzania to Toowoomba, Woop Woop and beyond – and the person being vox-popped would be able to immediately picture the star.

So yes, the woman is worthy of being the first pop icon to have a bronze statue erected in honour of her contributions to modern entertainment. Though the crowd gathered around her looks as artificially inseminated as some of the support players in her latter-day music clips, the fact remains that the real audience is still here, still watching her every move, still criticising her any fault (them’s the breaks when you’re this big a star), the fans still waiting with baited breath for the next big record release.

While many a performer has sung about Hollywood with high praise and a touch of cautionary warning – as if making it there were the pinnacle of success but with conditions (from The Kinks’ Celluloid Heroes to Lady Gaga’s The Fame), Madonna ripped the city to shreds in her irony-laden pop-dance track that took its very title from the sign that stands behind her. To her, Hollywood has meant failed (or lack of) auditions, disappointing reviews, horrible talk around town, and dismal dollars at the box office when you compare takings of her total commercial and arthouse oeuvre with the insane amount of bums on seats just one Marvel movie might score.

The fact that this star hasn’t even featured in a film since 2002’s romantic comedy Swept Away, directed by her then-husband Guy Ritchie, and that she barely even bothers to look at scripts today – yet is standing tall in bronze in the middle of acting city – speaks volumes about her popularity and pop cultural prowess. She may blink too much in certain scenes of a film where the actor is required to just stand there and look shocked or in awe at her leading man. She may be too bossy for directors to be able to control onset or off. But when it comes to calling “cut” on her star power and global ubiquity, she’ll be the one making that director’s statement, honey.

Antonino Tati