After Madonna finished The Virgin Tour, she asked producers Patrick Leonard and Stephen Bray to write some songs with her and produce her third studio album, "True Blue" (1986). "Live to Tell" was originally an instrumental composed by Leonard for the score of Paramount's romantic drama film "Fire with Fire". "My managers represented the guy who was directing the film; it was his first film. I saw a little piece of the film, and I had the script. I wrote a theme and I said, 'What if I could get Madonna to write the lyrics for it?'", said Leonard.