Following in the footsteps of recent music biopics such as Rocketman and Bohemian Rhapsody, Cher is the latest star whose life will be given the big-screen treatment.
The singer and actress, who turned 75 on Wednesday, took to Twitter to reveal that Eric Roth, the Oscar-winning screenwriter behind Forrest Gump and A Star is Born will be writing the film that will focus on her colourful life and decades-long career.
The film is being produced by the team behind Mamma Mia!, in which Cher starred as Ruby Sheridan, the mother of Meryl Streep's character, Donna.
Ok Universal is Doing Biopic With My Friends JUDY CRAYMER,GARY GOETZMAN PRODUCING.
— Cher (@cher) May 19, 2021
THEYY PRODUCED
BOTH MAMMA MIA’S,&
MY DEAR DEAR Friend 4 YRS, & OSCAR WINNER..ERIC ROTH IS GOING 2 WRITE IT👻🎂‼️
FORREST GUMP
A STAR IS BORN
SUSPECT
TO NAME A FEW OF IS FILMS
Having declared from the time she was in high school “I was always thinking about when I was grown up and famous”, the performer has seen her career enjoy skyscraper highs and fall to basement lows.
She's been married twice, surviving a controlling marriage to her singing partner and manager, Sonny Bono; Oscar-nominated twice, in 1984 for Best Supporting Actress for Silkwood, and again in 1988 for Moonstruck, for which she walked away with the Best Actress statuette. She was also almost one of the leads in Thelma & Louise.
Surprisingly, for a music career spanning 59 years and counting, she has only one Grammy, for the 2000 dance smash Believe.
The mother-of-two has reinvented her career over and over again, selling perfumes, dolls and fitness videos, and starring in infomercials, in a way which was derided in the 1980s and 1990s, but which nowadays would be lauded for the hustle.
She’s embarked on record-breaking tours and is the only artist to have had Billboard number ones in six consecutive decades, from the 1960s to 2010s.
In 1976, her Cher doll surpassed Barbie to become the highest-selling doll of the year, and her 1987 fragrance named Uninhibited raked in more than $15 million in its first year. In short, she was being a multi-hyphenate long before Paris, Kim, Selena, Jessica et al were even born.
From folk pop to disco, her music career has been as varied as her movie roles, and at 75 she's a prolific tweeter, with even her most mundane updates, such as, "have to take shower" garnering 17,000 likes.
One of those rarefied stars who are known by just one name, here are five moments from Cher’s life we hope are included in the film …
1. Winning the Oscar for 'Moonstruck'
Five years after she recalled seeing audiences snigger when her name appeared in the credits for the 1983 film Silkwood, Cher was to have the last laugh. Beating the likes of Meryl Streep and Glenn Close, she scooped the Best Actress Oscar for Moonstruck, in which she played a widow in love with her fiance's younger brother.
Losing a long dangly earring on her walk to the podium, her embellished Bob Mackie dress has achieved fashion legend status over the years.
“I don’t think that this means I am somebody,” she said of the win, “but I guess it means I’m on my way.”
2. Dating Tom Cruise
Cher dated Tom Cruise, who was 16 years her junior, back in 1985 when he was 23 and she was 38. The pair first met at Madonna and Sean Penn's wedding in Malibu, but it wasn't until their next meeting at the White House when they really connected.
"A bunch of people who were dyslexic were invited to the White House, and Tom and I are both dyslexic," she told Event of the gathering at the Reagan-era White House. "We didn't go out until way later, but there definitely was a connection there." She later told Oprah Winfrey they might have enjoyed a "great big romance" had their busy schedules not kept them apart.
3. Creating the modern-day Met Gala
The Met Gala wasn't always the star-packed, must-attend event on the A-list calendar that it is today.
Although Vogue editor Anna Wintour has been rightly credited with turning it from a dowdy fundraiser into the spectacular it is now, fashion insiders point to Cher herself for reinvigorating the event many years before.
Wearing a nude-coloured, feathered gown to the Gala in 1974 (she would don it again the following year for the cover of Time), former Vogue editor-at-large Andre Leon Talley said of Cher's fashion moment: "It was really the first time a Hollywood celebrity attended, and it changed everything. We are still seeing versions of that look on the Met red carpet 40 years later." Indeed, Kim Kardashian would pay homage in 2015.
4. Clashing with David Letterman on his talk show
As someone who isn’t afraid of a little confrontation, storming out of interviews has never been Cher’s style, which is how her now-infamous 1986 interview with US talk show host David Letterman came about.
Arms folded and leaning away from the host, who tries desperately to charm her, Letterman asks “Why?” when she tells him, “I never thought that I would want to do this show with you".
Her answer has become the stuff of legend and, as Rolling Stone's Andy Greene points out: "Had YouTube existed back then, this would have gone insanely viral."
5. Her relationship with husband and manager Sonny Bono
While the chameleonic Cher has never been defined in terms of the men in her life, there’s no denying the impact her relationship with and marriage to Sonny Bono had on her life and career.
After Cher started out as his housekeeper, he was the one who launched her career by introducing her to producer Phil Spector. The pair married in 1969, and she later told Parade magazine: "He didn't want me to grow up or have any freedom. I wasn't allowed to do anything except work. We worked more than we lived."
