Al Pacino bullied Madonna (in character) on Dick Tracy

It’s not easy to be a pop star-turned-actor. Look at attempts by folks like Harry Styles, Taylor Swift, Rihanna, or even Beyoncé: they weren’t exactly lighting up the screen. Comparatively, Madonna is something of a success. She had critically acclaimed turns in Desperately Seeking Susan, A League Of Their Own, Girl 6, Evita, and Dick Tracy. But she also had such high-profile flops that it led to her giving up her acting career entirely.

Still, there remains a lingering fascination for the era in which the world’s biggest pop star took on Hollywood, as evidenced by a new Vulture piece peering behind the scenes at some of her screen work. There are some fun tidbits in there, including that Madonna was more or less bullied by both Al Pacino and Stephen Sondheim on Dick Tracy. In Pacino’s case, it’s because he came to rehearsals in character as Big Boy, who “hollered,” “mocked,” “pushed,” and “taunted,” Madonna (a.k.a. Breathless Mahoney) and her dancers. “Musicals were a totally foreign world to him, so I think it was a way for him to feel more free and not become self-conscious,” choreographer Jeffrey Hornaday recalled. Madonna easily absorbed this bit of method acting, and also handled herself around the notoriously exacting Sondheim: “He’s very demanding and very specific about how things should go,” Hornaday said. “It was a huge challenge for her emotionally, and he was totally happy with her.”

Elsewhere, there’s some trivia about James Foley pushing Madge to take a photograph with Donald Trump so they could use the Trump Tower in Who’s That Girl (“I don’t think she made eye contact with him”), rebranding herself for Evita, and some interesting insight into her on-set relationship with director-husband Guy Ritchie on her last movie Swept Away. Even before that notorious bomb, Madonna was beginning to gain a reputation as box office poison. But Spike Lee “didn’t give a fuck” about that when he cast her in a cameo role in Girl 6. “She’s who I had in mind, and she wanted to do it, so that was it. She’s a pro,” Lee declared to Vulture. They’ve remained friends, and Lee reportedly even gave feedback for the script of her abandoned self-directed biopic that was meant to star Julia Garner. Even better, Lee said Madonna called him up when his son was hitting on her daughter Lourdes: “She said, ‘Spike, your son is bothering my daughter,’” he laughed. You can read the full piece here.