Celebrity Mound

Katy Perry graces the March cover of ELLE Magazine. Check out a few interview highlights below:

On life before she became a successful artist and the ultimatum she gave herself: “I had two cars repossessed, and I was writing bad checks, but I gave myself a timeline. I thought, Okay, if I don’t make it by 25, I’m just going to get married and pop out some babies and do some crafts.”

On her down-to-earth personality: “It’s important to be relatable and normal. And I think that what helps with that, for me, is that I had the rug pulled out from underneath my feet so many times. It was like, ‘Listen up, bitch, you’re not going to get served this on a silver platter—you’ve got to work for it!’ I don’t feel like I can act like an entitled bitch yet! I still have so much to prove.”

On her much talked about figure: “I was shaped like a square at one time. I was! I’m generally around 130 pounds, which is totally fine for me. But when I was a kid, I was the same height and weighed more like 145. And I had enormous boobs that I didn’t know what to do with, so I wore minimizers, which were not cute. Those thick-ass straps! I got made fun of for the over-the-shoulder boulder holder…and all I wanted was to look like Kate Moss. Little did I know…that these things would come in handy someday.”

On her current look: “Bettie Page meets Wonder Woman meets Doris Day meets Judy Jetson meets Natalie Wood meets Daphne Guinness meets Chloë Sevigny kind of look.”

On her relationship with husband, Russell Brand: “Everything clicked really fast. We kind of instantly got past all the surfacey stuff. And ever since then, there hasn’t been a dull moment.”

On how their relationship works: “We both needed balance, and we give that to each other. It wasn’t about me taming him, which is what everyone always says—it was about timing.”

On performing: “I think some people will die on the stage, and I’m not so sure I want to do that. Like, I want to have kids! I’m totally fine with saying that. I think some people are scared because they’re worried it’s going to ruin their career, but I want to live a full life.”

On how her career has panned out: “I feel like I’m at a point in my life right now where I could potentially stick around. I don’t feel like a diva, but I think diva is a great and powerful word in the sense of what Beyonce makes it. And maybe I can’t be Beyonce, but maybe I can be Cyndi Lauper. I mean be like her, not be her. That would just be weird.”

To see More Photos and Info from the Katy Perry Cover Story Visit:
http://www.elle.com/Pop-Culture/Cover-Shoots/Fantastic-Voyage-Katy-Perry?cid=sm_pr_KatyPerryCover

Katy Perry loves a man in a uniform.

The pop superstar met dozens of service members while working on the special “VH1 Divas Salute the Troops” this weekend near San Diego.

“There was a kid who I met backstage who was rather chatty, but adorable,” Perry recalled. “He was really sweet. He was 19. He had such a good heart. He said, ‘Yes, ma’am’ to me. ‘Yes ma’am!’ I was like, ‘O.K.! Yes, sir!’”

A VH1 publicist estimated an audience of 27,000 attended the nearly three-hour taping of the concert Friday night at the Marine Corps Air Station in Miramar. The show, which airs Sunday night, features a bounty of what the network has dubbed “divas” – female or female-lead musical acts, including established stars such as Heart, Paramore and Sugarland, as well as hot newcomers Grace Potter and The Nocturnals, Keri Hilson and Nicki Minaj.

But if one diva emerged supreme, it was Perry, who both opened and closed the show, and performed solo or with others on a half-dozen songs — twice that of anyone else in the lineup.

“I really had to live up to the definition of a ‘diva’ in all senses of the word,” Perry joked. “So, I had to be very difficult today, and late,” she continued, adding that she was really neither.

Perry went on to reference Beyonce’s song “Diva,” then proceeded to lose the lyric. “Blaaah! Obviously I’m not Beyonce,” Perry laughed. “She is the true diva.”

Onstage, Perry pulled out the stops – and the costumes – with the opening number featuring Perry, Hilson and Sugarland’s Jennifer Nettles in WAC uniforms for a cover of The Andrews Sisters’ ’40s classic “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.”

Perry closed the show with her current smash “Firework,” which concluded, appropriately, with a fireworks display. For that finale, Perry wore a cherry-red beaded gown with thigh-high slit that looked as if it was borrowed from Jessica Rabbit’s closet. “You know me, I love vintage,” Perry explained. “I love pinup girls. So, I tried to recreate that. I think any Army guy has a soft spot for a girl that can be painted on their plane.”

Perry, 26, and her new husband, actor Russell Brand, will be spending their first holiday season together as husband and wife. “What do I want for Christmas? Well, I think what is appropriate now is, I hope the troops come home very safely,” she replied, then delivered a message to service members.

“Be careful out there during the holidays,” Perry told them. “Keep your Skype and your iChat on because I know some of them are away from all their family and wives. I can understand that feeling every once in awhile because I am on the battlefield myself, but I am just singing pop songs,” she laughed.

“But, I am away from my hubby every once in awhile, and we use Skype and iChat and that really helps. So I just hope everybody can find a great Christmas and be blessed.”