Madonna has always changed up her look.

A job application from 19-year-old Madonna - hoping for a starring role in an erotic thriller - has drawn applause from literature lovers.

The teenager was a drummer in 1978 and keen to make headlines in the movies when she wrote a covering letter asking to appear in A Certain Sacrifice - her first film role.

She told first-time film-maker Stephen Lewicki that she knew she wanted to be "a nun or a movie star" by the time she was in fifth grade.

Supplied Madonna in the 1996 film version of Evita,.

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The personal text, written decades before Madonna would go on to be the Queen of Pop, was read to an audience at the Letters Live evening in central London, an event which celebrates remarkable letters and the enduring power of correspondence.

Madonna states that her career began "in petulance and precociousness" in her home town of Detroit, Michigan.

BOBBY YIP Madonna states that her career began "in petulance and precociousness" in her home town of Detroit, Michigan.

Madonna tells Lewicki that she did unfulfilling dancing tours in Italy, sang in a New Wave band, worked with a filmmaker and modelled for artists and photographers before being spotted by French record producers in May 1979.

She worked across Europe but did not really like it.

Paris had a "sterility" and so she headed back to New York to play the drums, take dance classes and wait for her 20th birthday.

Madonna signed off the letter with her personal detail - including her height at 5ft 4ins, her weight at 102lbs, plus stating she had brown hair and hazel eyes.

She got the part, the audience heard.