Cher, 78, has released a memoir looking back at her career. Photo: CHRIS DELMAS / AFP
Singer and actor Cher's stellar career spans six decades. In the first of a two-volume memoir, she turns back time and takes us through the first 34 years of her life beginning with a turbulent childhood and a rocky marriage to Sonny Bono.
Back in the mid-1960s, as part of duo Sonny and Cher, their own distinctive look raised eyebrows, she tells RNZ's Jesse Mulligan.
When the duo arrived in London after a 14-hour flight, the Hilton Hotel took a dim view of their outfits and declined to let them stay.
1970: Cher and Sonny Bono pose for a promotional photo for 'The Sonny and Cher Show' in 1970. (Photo by Martin Mills/Getty Images) Photo: Martin Mills
Out the street, they caught the attention of a press photographer.
"We walked down the street, and there was one [photographer] that was there, and then a few minutes later, another one came up, and they asked us who we were, and we said, 'Sonny and Cher'.
"And they asked us why we looked like that, and we said, because we like it. They were really nice and took our picture, and then it ended up in a newspaper that evening, and that's the story. That's how it started."
The publicity launched their career in the UK.
"We were on Top of the Pops and Ready Steady Go about a million times, and we knocked the Beatles off the chart."
Sonny and Cher in London 1960s. Photo: Fred Mott
That distinctive look made Cher one of the most recognisable faces of the 1960s.
Back in the US, at a party thrown by Jackie Kennedy, her look caught the attention of Vogue editor Diana Vreeland.
"A very strange looking woman came up to me, and she looked at me, and she was dressed strange and makeup that was unbelievably strange, and she took my chin and she said, 'My dear, you have a pointed head. You're beautiful.'
"I loved her. My first time in Vogue, she put me in because she wanted to see my back and she wanted to see my fingernails. And then I did many, many, many layouts for her."
Vreeland could see a new look was emerging, quite different to the all-American blue-eyed girl, she said.
"She did that with quite a number of us, Anjelica Houston, me and Penelope Tree.
"She had this foresight to see these women that weren't perfect, they weren't blonde or blue-eyed, and they were strange and interesting.
"You wouldn't go, oh my God, that's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. But she saw in us something that was the future, I had the future body."
The first time she met Sonny Bono, she was still only 16.
"It was like when Maria saw Tony (in West Side Story). First of all, I had my back to him, but I saw all these people in front of me, going, 'Hey, Son, Son, come sit with us, Sonny, come over and sit with us, Sonny, come on over here.'
"And I was saying, who is this guy? And then I turn around, and I see this man, impeccably dressed, but strangely dressed, mustard mohair suit and a mustard shirt with a white tie and a beautiful watch, but it was in a chain bracelet, and he had the most beautiful fingers, so I saw those things all at one time."
Sonny and Cher Bono pose with their daughter Chastity, 1973. Photo: Pictorial Parade
It was the start of a pop career, and later, the chemistry between them helped launch a second TV career in the early 1970s, she said. At the time pop stardom had petered out and bookings were thin on the ground.
"We started playing these awful places that were supper clubs, and the people didn't really like us, Sonny was much more agreeable, I mean, he was more grown up about the whole thing, but I really wasn't."
One night Cher, angry at the unengaged audience, started joking about them with the band, she said.
"They were laughing hysterically, Sonny was hysterical. Sonny was really great in picking up on things, seeing ahead.
"And so, he thought, okay, we can use this to make another step, which is exactly what happened.
"The head of CBS saw us and said, we'll give them a summer replacement show."
That spawned the Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour which would be watched by millions.
Cher's outfits on the show were legendary.
"People were fascinated and hadn't seen clothes like it on TV. Also, I was the first woman to show my belly button. Not that that's a big thing, but for TV, it was a big thing."
Their romantic and professional partnership ended in the late 1970s and Cher went on to huge success as an actor and solo performer.
So, at age 78, would she change anything after looking back on her life for the memoir?
"Oh God, I'd probably change everything. But this is what it is. This is who I am. This is what I've got."
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