From the iconic meat dress at the 2010 VMAs, chart topping singles and redefining a whole genre of music, to now working alongside critically acclaimed actors. She is a woman who has remained in the limelight for over a decade and, in the past few years, Lady Gaga has expanded her horizons in the world of acting and is now starring in the Oscar-nominated movie ‘House of Gucci’.
This month ‘House of Gucci’, directed by Ridley Scott, is coming to cinemas. It is a film biopic based on the book ‘The House of Gucci: A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour and Greed’ by Sara Gay Forden. The film focuses on Patrizia Reggiani, played by Lady Gaga, an Italian socialite who married Maurizio Gucci, played by Adam Driver, an heir of the Gucci family. The film will follow romance, betrayal, revenge and eventual downfall of Patrizia Reggiani, who was convicted of hiring a hitman to murder her ex-husband in 1995.
Lady Gaga, born as Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta in 1986, was raised in Manhattan with her two parents and her younger sister. From her “pre-Gaga” days there has definitely been a journey to get to the point of starring alongside Hollywood A-listers, such as Al Pacino, Salma Hayek and Jared Leto.
Gaga’s first introduction to the world came in the form of her first single ‘Just Dance’ which ended up topping charts across the world. In 2012, Time (magazine) put Gaga on their All-Time 100 fashion Icons List and stated: “Lady Gaga is just as notorious for her outrageous style as she is for her pop hits.” Over the years, Gaga has rocked some very questionable outfits, including ones made from plastic bubbles, sea shells, feathers and most notoriously meat! Throughout her career, Lady Gaga become known as a staple of 21st century pop culture and an influential pop and fashion icon.
Gaga’s passion and dedication to her craft and projects that she has immersed herself in has never faltered. In a 2009 interview for The Guardian, Gaga praised her education for her attention to detail: “I think that my education is what really sets me apart. In a show, if I decide to make a coat red I think: is it communist red? Is it cherry cordial? Is it ruby red? Or is it apple red?... It's like there are so many components to making a show and making art, and my school taught me how to think that way." And it is this perfectionism that she has carried forward in all her work and, over a decade on from the interview, Gaga is now using these practices for Hollywood films.
Playing Reggiani was a role that Lady Gaga made sure she was ready for. She immersed herself in the role and even spent eighteen months preparing – nine of those speaking with an Italian accent. Speaking to Giles Hattersley for British Vogue, Gaga explained the extra mile she went to perfect her accent: “I started with a specific dialect from Vignola, then I started to work in the higher-class way of speaking.” Gaga herself has Italian ancestry which played a big part in making her feel closer to the role. She admitted that she “just wanted to make them [her ancestors] proud.”
Despite Reggiani still being alive, Gaga made the decision to not meet her and wanted to create her own interpretation of Reggiani. Talking to Hattersley, she said she felt as if “I could truly do this story justice if I approached it with the eye of a curious woman… meaning that nobody was going to tell me who Patrizia Gucci was – not even Patrizia Gucci.”
In an interview earlier this year with an Italian journalist, Patrizia Reggiani said that since Lady Gaga was playing her in a movie, she was annoyed that Gaga had not reached out to her “out of respect.” But this was all part of Gaga’s method, and she even admitted to never even reading the book that this movie adaptation was based on, believing that it would “colour my way of thinking.”
Gaga’s method acting in the role took a step further, when she revealed she had used her own personal trauma for the role. Gaga has been very open about suffering with PTSD and revealed that she suffered a breakdown after becoming a victim of sexual assault by a producer in the music industry. Speaking in an interview with BBC entertainment correspondent, Lizo Mzimba, she said she had felt “endlessly controlled by men as I continued my career and tried to find my own voice and be in my own empowerment.”
Gaga felt that the trauma she has suffered actually helped her resonate with Reggiani and connect with the role, believing that Reggiani’s crime was simply a woman who was “pushed to the edge.”
In the trailer for the film, fans were given a glimpse of Lady Gaga transformed into Patrizia Reggiani and were treated to the already iconic line: “Father, Son and House of Gucci.” This line has already become a staple of the movie and the power that the Gucci family held in society at the time, but speaking to Variety, Gaga revealed that this line was entirely ad-libbed: "Something about that scene, when we were doing it, felt right. It's a testament to Ridley Scott as a director. He uses the creativity."
House of Gucci is Gaga’s second major film lead since, starring alongside Bradley Cooper in ‘A Star is Born’ (2018), where she was nominated for best actress at the Oscars. She believes that Bradley Cooper is a credit to her success, for where she is now and even still asks him for advice. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, she said that she consulted Cooper before taking the role of Patrizia Reggiani: “It was the success of our artistic collaboration that landed me where I am now.”
Gaga has not yet announced any further acting roles following ‘House of Gucci.’
House of Gucci will be released in UK cinemas later this month on November 26.
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