Gaga over Gaga: A Lady of a Million Faces

Lady Gaga: The Lady of a Million Faces

By Sondra Barr

Multitalented Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta is one of the most celebrated artists on the planet whose full name you’ve probably never heard. Yet, unless you’ve been living off the grid for the last 15 years, it’s guaranteed you’ll instantly recognize her iconic face.

Better known as Lady Gaga, a moniker inspired by the 1984 song “Radio Ga Ga” by Queen, Germanotta’s explosive ascent to superstardom was fast and furious, with a longevity that shows no signs of waning.

Using “David Bowie’s amphibious glam, Madonna’s blond ambition, Michael Jackson’s dual love of sparkles and precision” as her creative muses, Gaga’s forged her own amorphous persona that consistently connects with enamored fans and leaves them wanting more.

Each iteration of Gaga is arguably better than the last. Her recent turn portraying Patrizia Reggiani, an Italian socialite who was convicted of hiring a hitman to kill her former husband, Maurizio Gucci, an example. The film House of Gucci is Gaga’s latest high-profile coup––just one in a long list of accomplishments that have garnered numerous awards and accolades.

It was as a singer songwriter that Gaga first entranced audiences in 2008 with her debut studio album, The Fame. With the ubiquitous hits “Just Dance” and “Poker Face,” it was an album that defined the year, if not the decade. She followed it up with the Born This Way album. The title song was number one in over 25 countries, with the single selling more than 10.49 million copies, making it among the best-selling songs of all time.

“It’s like open heart surgery to do a record. You have to dig deeper and deeper. It’s painful, and then when it’s over you’re healed again,” Gaga told Home Business of developing an album from start to finish.

Yet dig deeper the 36 year old does, each of her succeeding albums a distinct departure from the last. From dance beats to electronic rock to jazz, she crafts all her albums with a deft hand and impressive lyrical range, each encompassing a different sound and feel.

“She learned to play piano by ear at home when she was really young,” Gaga’s mother Cynthia Germanotta told In Style. “One day I said, ‘Do you want to take some lessons?’ She was a little bit confused by that because she said that she heard the music in her head. She didn’t understand why she had to take a lesson. That was a defining moment because I knew there was something different about her at that point. I didn’t know what it would lead to, but I realized that there was something more there.”

While her parents supported the raw talent they recognized in their daughter, her antics on stage initially gave them pause.

“When Gaga started emerging, when she was performing, I think it was at Joe’s Pub downtown, and she was in her bikini performing with Lady Starlight, and decided that night to do heavy metal and to actually light hairspray on fire,” Cynthia told Oprah. “Some people left when that happened, a lot of people stayed and thought it was cool. Her father and I were like––honestly, he said, ‘I think she has a screw loose.”

Perhaps then it was no surprise after extraordinary musical success that Gaga would turn her sights to acting, something she had wanted to do since childhood.

Indulging their talented daughter with method-acting classes at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute at NYU’s Tisch School of Arts when she was 12, signaled the things to come. “I loved it so much,” said Gaga to Vogue’s Jonathan Van Meter. “But I was terrible at auditioning––I would get too nervous and just couldn’t be myself.”

Fast forward to 2015, when she took on a leading role in the miniseries American Horror Story: Hotel. Her portrayal of a vampiric, self-styled Countess, a bloodsucking fashionista, earned Gaga a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress. She followed it up with another winning turn in the 2018 critically acclaimed film A Star is Born, playing Ally, a young singer who’s discovered by an alcoholic musician.

Although Gaga came close to winning an Oscar for the performance, she didn’t leave empty handed. She took home an Oscar for Best Original Song for Shallow, making her the first woman in history to win an Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, Grammy Award, and BAFTA Award in a single year.

Taking on the role of Patrizia Reggiani in House of Gucci, struck Gaga as the ideal next step. “What if I didn’t play some edgy, sexy, chancy, risky b*tch?” she recalled during the interview with Van Meter. “Some punky Italian gold digger?”

“I mean, I’m Italian-American, I come from a long lineage of Italians. And Italians are passionate, vibrant people. To Americans, who might go to Rome and hear women yelling in the piazza at each other, they would hear them as yelling when they’re simply just speaking to each other.”

To prepare for the role, Gaga spent a year and a half living as Reggiani in Italy, speaking with an accent for nine months––on and off camera. “Off camera, I never broke. I stayed with her.”

While she didn’t want to glorify somebody who would commit murder, Gaga approached the role from a unique perspective. “I hope women will watch this and remind themselves to think twice about the fact that hurt people hurt people. And it’s dangerous. What happens to somebody when they’re pushed over the edge?”

Gaga knows a thing or two about being pushed to the edge. Before she became a household name, she was raped at 19 by a music producer. She didn’t tell anyone for years until she revealed in a 2016 Today interview that she suffers from PTSD stemming from the assault.

“For me, with my mental-health issues, half of the battle in the beginning was, I felt like I was lying to the world because I was feeling so much pain but nobody knew. So that’s why I came out and said that I have PTSD, because I don’t want to hide away more than I already have to,” she explained to Vogue.

To further confront the issue, she co-founded the Born This Way Foundation, with her mother to support the mental health of young people. According to the foundation’s website, through high-impact programming, youth-led conversations, and strategic, cross-sectoral partnerships, the organization aims to make kindness cool, validate the emotions of young people, and eliminate the stigma surrounding mental health.

Starting the foundation and singing at Joe Biden’s inauguration are among Gaga’s proudest accomplishments. “Ushering 45 out and 46 in is something I’ll be able to tell my children all about,” she told Vogue.

What’s next for the talented Gaga, aside from starting on the aforementioned children? Well, after recently completing a two-week show performing jazz and piano at the Park MGM in Las Vegas, she’s gearing up for a 15-show stadium tour to support her recent Chromatica album. The tour includes a stop in Dallas on Aug. 26, fyi. Gaga also wants to try her hand at directing a movie at some point. And, don’t be surprised if you see Gaga take on the role of Mary Magdalene from the Bible, a woman she considers one of the most fascinating of all time.