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" On the release of her film, W.E., the superstar talks women, power and sexuality. Read the interview here, plus see the extended Q&amp;amp;amp;A below:  On W.E.: When I was really investigating the story of Wallis and Edward, I was struck by the idea that a man would walk away from something that is so symbolic of power. Men are such power-seeking creatures and they usually kill people to get to the throne. And here&amp;#039;s a man who decides one day that he&amp;#039;s going to leave the throne for love. Men usually say &amp;#039;Okay, I&amp;#039;m taking this job and you&amp;#039;re coming with me and you support me and that&amp;#039;s what I need&amp;#039;. So there&amp;#039;s one layer where you can look at it and go, &amp;#039;Oh my god, that&amp;#039;s so romantic, what a great sacrifice.&amp;#039; I thought it was also very courageous of him because surely he understood the criticism that he was going to be exposed to. There&amp;#039;s just so many layers. Why would he walk away from this? Why couldn&amp;#039;t he have found another way to make the situation work? Why didn&amp;#039;t he see what the future was going to hold for him? Because if you just look at it on a surface level, you go &amp;#039;Oh god he&amp;#039;s weak. He&amp;#039;s a weak person&amp;#039;. But I looked at it and I turned the page said, &amp;#039;Actually what a brave thing to do.&amp;#039; I saw Edward as very punk rock. On art: I&amp;#039;m attracted to artists like Frida Kahlo, because her work was her life, her questions, her outrage, her suffering, her pain. Everything is in her work. It was all a self-portrait, but that doesn&amp;#039;t mean that everything that has to be taken literally. Really, it&amp;#039;s one of my big pet peeves in life, that everybody takes everything literally, whether it&amp;#039;s the Bible or a work of art or literature or a human being. You can&amp;#039;t take anything literally. And I was very influenced by Anne Sexton. Because of her sassiness, she was a provocateur. She was a housewife who was married with children in the Fifties, repressed, but decided to go to school and become a writer against her husband&amp;#039;s wishes. Even her own teachers were telling her to stop writing such personal stuff. And she did it anyway. I loved her\u2014I felt a kinship with her desire to break out of oppression and her search for somebody to connect with. On starting out:  When I really started to take dancing seriously and saw myself as being a professional dancer, I decided to move to New York and leave that very provincial way of thinking in the Midwest behind. I wanted to go to New York, where all the eccentric, artistic people lived. At the time, my ballet teacher, who was a flamboyantly gay man, was really the first person in my life to encourage me to be different; to encourage me to follow my dreams. He was really the first one that said, &amp;quot;Get out of here. And you are special and you have something. Go follow your dreams.&amp;quot; And everybody needs that. On gossip:  People get energy from it: it&amp;#039;s like a hit, like taking a drug. People like it when others are gossiping. When you hear a story about someone&amp;#039;s demise or some big faux-pas they made, everyone wants to tune into it, because it&amp;#039;s nice to know that someone else made a mistake. It makes you feel elevated for a moment. So I educate my children about that human trait we have that isn&amp;#039;t very attractive. I let them know that it&amp;#039;s going to happen to me, and possibly to them by default. But it goes into the folder of examination. It provokes many discussions about what&amp;#039;s real and what isn&amp;#039;t, about the society we live in. On family: Lourdes has her group of friends and she spends time with her father, who she adores [Madonna&amp;#039;s ex, Carlos Leon). He also lives in the city, and they take the subway together. She calls it &amp;quot;my normal life,&amp;quot; and I know that she enjoys it. She likes going to her abuela&amp;#039;s house\u2014they still live in the same apartment that her father grew up in on the Upper West Side, a one-bedroom apartment. And they are really simple, humble people, and I&amp;#039;m so happy that she has that. My son, Rocco, is really into break-dancing. He has a crew that he dances with, and they&amp;#039;re kids from all over the city, Brooklyn, Queens. And my two youngest children are adopted from Malawi, and we discuss on a regular basis the orphanages they come from and the other children who didn&amp;#039;t get adopted, who might still be in the orphanages, or don&amp;#039;t even have an orphanage. We talk about the disparity in lifestyles and we all go back there. I&amp;#039;m doing my best to keep them grounded. See Madonna&amp;#039;s fashion shoot with Andrea Riseborough and relive her most iconic fashion moments. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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