Cher’s Breakthrough in Music:
Cher is an American performer who was born in El Centro, California, on May 20, 1946. She became well-known as a young pop singer in the 1960s and was able to turn her early popularity into a successful career in acting, live performances, and recording. She has developed an image over the years that is both bold and resilient, strong yet vulnerable. Cher is considered as a cultural icon who constantly reinvents herself through clothes and new creative endeavors, and she is well-known for her devoted fan following.
Actress Georgia Holt (born Jackie Jean Crouch) was Cher‘s mother. She had two marriages and two divorces with Cher’s father, horse breeder John Paul Sarkisian. Cher was briefly placed in an orphanage following her parents’ initial divorce due to her mother’s financial difficulties. Georganne, Georgia Holt’s second daughter, was born after she remarried multiple times. In 1961, her mother married bank executive Gilbert Hartmann LaPiere, who legally became the adoptive father of both Cher and Georganne.
Unbeknownst to her, cher had dyslexia as a child, which made school difficult for her. She left school at the age of sixteen and relocated to Los Angeles, where she met singer-songwriter Salvatore (“Sonny”) Bono, whom she married in 1964. The two started playing together, and in 1965, “I Got You Babe,” which sold over three million copies, became their first significant musical hit. Because of their obvious height difference, the pair became visually distinctive as a couple and sang a number of successful songs. But by the late 1960s, their appeal started to wane.
The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, a television variety show that aired until 1974, brought them newfound prominence in 1971. Cher’s solo singing career took off during this time. “Gypsys, Tramps and Thieves,” “Half-Breed,” and “Dark Lady” were her three number-one songs in the early 1970s. Despite their brief reunion as co-hosts of a different television program in 1976–77, Cher and Sonny divorced in 1974.
Cher resurrected her long-standing interest in acting and started a successful nightclub performance after Sonny departed the entertainment industry. She featured in both the Broadway and film versions of Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982) and garnered an Academy Award nod for her supporting performance in Silkwood (1983).
Her portrayal of an Italian-American widow in the romantic comedy Moonstruck (1987) earned her the 1988 Academy Award for Best Actress. Mask (1985), Suspect (1987), The Witches of Eastwick (1987), Mermaids (1990), and Tea with Mussolini (1999) are some of her other well-known movies.
Cher’s television credits include the 1996 movie If These Walls Could Talk, in which she costarred with Demi Moore and Sissy Spacek. In the sitcom Will & Grace, she also made brief appearances as Jack McFarland (Sean Hayes), a budding performer who was infatuated with her. In the 2010 musical drama Burlesque, she costarred with Christina Aguilera as a nightclub owner and performer. The next year, she voiced a lioness in the comedy Zookeeper. Cher later starred in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Once More (2018).
In the late 1980s, Cher released two tremendously popular albums (1987) and Heart of Stone (1989). Her hallmark song, “If I Could Turn Back Time,” peaked at number three in 1989 after her power ballad, “I Found Someone,” became a top-10 smash in 1988. Her music career slowed down after this, but with Believe (1998) and Living Proof (2002), she made a significant comeback. Her dance track “Believe,” which peaked at number one on the Billboard chart, earned her a Grammy Award in 2000. The first big song to use Auto-Tune, a method that artificially improves a singer’s pitch, was “Believe.”
Cher’s two sons are Elijah Blue Allman (from her marriage to musician Greg Allman, which lasted from 1975 to 1979) and Chaz Bono (from her marriage to Sonny Bono). Her extremely successful—and opulent—Las Vegas residency from 2008 to 2011 amply established her ongoing popularity across generations. She began a second musical residency in Las Vegas and Washington, D.C. in 2017. Closer to the Truth (2013), Dancing Queen (2018), and Christmas (2023) are some of her latter albums.
In 2018, Cher was recognized with the Kennedy Center Honors. Her contributions to music were officially honored with a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2024. Cher: The Memoir, Part One, which details her life from childhood to the early years of her acting career, was published that same year. Cher announced plans to release the second part of the open book in 2025 after it was widely praised by critics.