Madonna: Bullies made me successful

Madonna: 'I was a weirdo at school'

Madonna has admitted that playground bullying for being a 'weirdo' is one of the keys to her phenomenal success.

The Material Girl was anything but as a high school kid in the Seventies, and admits that she was considered strange and didn't fit in.

She told Vanity Fair in a recent interview: 'I wasn't a hippie or a stoner, so I ended up being the weirdo. I was interested in classical ballet and music, so the kids were quite mean if you were different.

'I was one of those people that people were mean to. When that happened, instead of being a doormat, I decided to emphasize my differences. I didn't shave my legs. I had hair growing under my arms. I refused to wear makeup, or fit the ideal of what a conventionally pretty girl would look like.

'So, of course, I was tortured even more.'

But the singer certainly looks fantastic on Vanity Fair's latest cover - her 10th for the magazine - clad in a leotard and knee-high boots.

The singer posed for the magazine’s third annual Green Issue, holding up a custom-made globe, in a pose inspired by the Twenties work of Czech photographer Frantisek Drtikol.