Christopher Ciccone reportedly passed away on Friday, October 4 after a long battle with cancer, as confirmed by The Hollywood Reporter. Born on November 22, 1960 in Bay City, Michigan, Ciccone was one of Madonna's younger siblings.
THR notes that Ciccone "died peacefully surrounded by his husband, Ray Thacker, and other loved ones." TMZ reports that he passed away in Michigan, and recalls that Madonna had just lost another family member — her stepmom, Joan Ciccone, at 81 years of age — a few weeks ago on September 26, 2024.
Best known for being a designer and an artist, Ciccone maintained a very high profile in the 1990s due to his work as a creative director for Madonna's Blond Ambition World Tour (1990) and The Girlie Show tour (1993) — two very iconic eras for the pop star.
Unfortunately, the two siblings had an eventual falling-out that led to Ciccone's bombshell book, Life With My Sister Madonna, published in 2008. In the book, Ciccone references a 1991 interview with The Advocate in which Madonna "outed him."
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Ciccone wrote in the seventh chapter of the book:
"In an apparent ploy to garner support for the [Truth or Dare documentary] by ingratiating herself with her gay fans, she says, 'My brother Christopher's gay, and he and I have always been the closest members of our family.'"
Madonna's quote "outing" Ciccone continued:
"It's funny. When he was really young, he was so beautiful and had girls all over him, more than any of my other brothers. I knew something was different, but it was not clear to me. I just thought, I know there are a lot of girls around, but I don't get that he has a girlfriend. He was like a girl-magnet. They all seemed incredibly fond of him and close to him in a way I hadn't seen men with women."
"I'll tell you when I knew," Madonna's quote in the book went on. "After I met Christopher [Flynn], I brought my brother to my ballet class because he wanted to start studying dance. I just saw something between them. I can't even tell you exactly what, but then I thought, Oh, I get it. Oh, okay. He likes men too. It was an incredible revelation, but I didn't say anything to my brother yet. I'm not even sure he knew. He's two years younger than me. He was still a baby. I could just feel something."
Ciccone described that he felt "incensed" at the time, and highlighted that Madonna was "outing [him] to the readers of The Advocate" as "the perfect promotional tool for the movie."
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By 2019, however, Ciccone told Radar Online that he eventually reconciled with Madonna. He explained:
"We are at peace now and just spoke last week. I recently moved from Los Angeles back to Michigan, where my father and family own a vineyard and winery."
On Sunday, October 6, Madonna shared a gut-wrenching post about Ciccone's death. The statement read:
"My brother Christopher is gone… He was the closest human to me for so long. It's hard to explain our bond, but it grew out of an understanding that we were different and society was going to give us a hard time for not following the status quo. We took each other's hands and we danced through the madness of our childhood. In fact, dance was a kind of superglue that held us together. Discovering dance in our small Midwestern town saved me, and then my brother came along, and it saved him too."
She added, "My ballet teacher, also named Christopher, created a safe space for my brother to be gay. a word that was not spoken or even whispered where we lived. When I finally got the courage to go to New York to become a dancer, my brother followed, and again we took each other's hands, and we danced through the madness of New York City!"
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Madonna's statement continued:
"We devoured Art and Music And Film like hungry animals. We were in the epicenter of all of these things exploding. We danced through the madness of the AIDS epidemic. We went to funerals and we cried, and we went dancing. We danced together on stage in the beginning of my career, and eventually, he became my creative director of many tours. When it came to good taste, my brother was the Pope, and you had to kiss the ring to get his blessing."
"We defied the Roman Catholic Church, the police, the Moral Majority, and all authority figures that got in the way of artistic freedom!" she recalled. "My brother was right by my side. He was a painter a poet and a visionary. I admired him. He had impeccable taste. And a sharp tongue, which he sometimes used against me, but I always forgave him. We soared the highest heights together and floundered in the lowest lows. Somehow, we always found each other again, and we held hands, and we kept dancing."
"The last few years have not been easy. We did not speak for some time, but when my brother got sick, we found our way back to each other. I did my best to keep him alive as long as possible. He was in so much pain towards the end. Once again, we held hands, we closed our eyes, and we danced together."
"I'm glad he's not suffering anymore," Madonna concluded. "There will never be anyone like him. I know he's dancing somewhere."
