Cher

The Survival Instinct in California

Cherilyn Sarkisian dropped out of high school at sixteen and moved to Los Angeles with one goal: becoming an actress. She had no backup plan, but she had a determination that bordered on recklessness. At a local club, she met Sonny Bono, and that chance encounter changed the course of popular music in the 1960s.

They formed a duo that blended folk with a hippie aesthetic that shocked the more conservative sectors of American television. They sold millions of copies of I Got You Babe in 1965. But the money disappeared as quickly as it came, due to rather poor financial management.

Television was his lifeline.

In 1971, they premiered The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, and the show became a massive ratings phenomenon. There, Cher learned the mechanics of physical comedy and how to handle timing in front of the camera. And she did it while her marriage was falling apart in private under the weight of the absolute control Bono exercised over her career and personal life.

After her divorce in 1975, she was left with millions in debt and the need to reinvent herself from scratch. She tried a solo career with mixed results until she decided it was time to return to her original ambition. She wanted the film industry to take her seriously.

Hollywood's Rejection

No one in the film industry wanted to hire a variety singer for a dramatic role. In 1982, she accepted a minimum salary to work on Broadway in the play Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. Robert Altman believed in her and directed her in the film adaptation that same year.

Mike Nichols saw her on stage and decided to cast her in Silkwood in 1983 without asking for a prior screen test. She shared the screen with Meryl Streep and earned her first Oscar nomination as a supporting actress. It was the exact moment when critics stopped seeing her as a television product and started treating her as a serious performer.

1987 was the year of her definitive breakthrough on the big screen.

She released three movies in very different genres in less than twelve months. The Witches of Eastwick was a box office hit, and Suspect proved she could carry a courtroom thriller with restraint. But it was Moonstruck that earned her the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1988 for her role as Loretta Castorini.

Despite her acting success, music remained her main financial engine. In 1989, she shot the music video for If I Could Turn Back Time on a United States Navy battleship. The era's censors banned the video from children's time slots, and that controversy boosted album sales to levels she hadn't reached in a decade.

Technology and the Retirement That Never Was

When many thought her career was over upon reaching fifty, she used technology to change the rules of pop. In 1998, she released Believe, and her use of the Auto-Tune audio processor created a vocal distortion that became standard in modern music production. The single reached number one in more than twenty countries.

But the exhaustion from constant touring led her to announce a retirement that was never entirely final. Between 2002 and 2005, she went on a farewell tour that grossed more than $250 million. That tour was designed to be the longest ever by a female artist up to that point.

She returned to film with Burlesque in 2010, and later appeared in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again in 2018. In the latter project, she performed ABBA songs, which led to a covers album that debuted at the top of the sales charts. No matter the era, audiences always responded to her contralto voice.

In 2023, she released her first Christmas album, titled Christmas.

In 2024, she was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame after years of being overlooked by the selection committee. The induction confirmed her status as the only artist with a No. 1 on a Billboard chart in each of the last seven decades. Her net worth is currently estimated at over 360 million dollars, derived from her publishing rights and real estate holdings.