Madonna

Date of Birth: 16th August 1968

Significant others: Married to Guy Ritchie

One minute rundown: There's no one more famous in the world - well, that might be a slight exaggeration but you rarely meet anyone who hasn't heard of the lady who revolutionized pop music in the 80s. Madge started out as a struggling artist in Manhattan, as so many do, before meeting hot and 'now' DJ, John "Jellybean" Benitez, who produced the club hit Holiday.

More hits soon followed and Like A Virgin shot to number one in the US charts in 1984, selling over seven million copies. Madonna was married to Sean Penn, although the pair later divorced after four years, and she went on to star in several successful movies, including Desperately Seeking Susan and Evita. She started worldwide fashion trends, had several run-ins with the church over her raunchy mix of Catholicism and sexuality and even had religious fanatics boycott her Blond Ambition tour in 1990.

After hooking up with a succession of eligible men including Warren Beatty, Vanilla Ice, her personal trainer Carlos Leon, (with whom she had her daughter, Lola), Madge finally married Guy Ritchie, with whom she already had a son, Rocco. A movie directed by Ritchie in 2002, Swept Away, was a flop, and another album, American Life, sparked protest over her views of the war in Iraq, but a kiss at the MTV awards with Britney and Christina got most of the world back on her side - well, the blokes anyway (typical). Although she fell off a horse and had to spend her 47th birthday in the hospital, her album Confessions On A Dancefloor won her Grammy number six in 2006, and she's been in the press again recently for adopting a child from Malawi called David Banda.