Cher

Cher (born Cherilyn Sarkisian; May 20, 1946) is an American singer, actress and television personality.

Often referred to by the media as the "Goddess of Pop", she has been described as embodying female autonomy in a male-dominated industry.

Cherilyn Sarkisian was born in El Centro, California, on May 20, 1946.

Her father, John Sarkisian, was an Armenian-American truck driver with drug and gambling problems; her mother, Georgia Holt (born Jackie Jean Crouch), was a former model and retired actress who claimed Irish, English, German, and Cherokee ancestry.

Her paternal grandparents were Armenian Genocide survivors.

Cher's father was rarely home when she was an infant, and her parents divorced when Cher was ten months old.

Her mother later married actor John Southall, with whom she had another daughter, Georganne, Cher's half-sister.

Moving to Los Angeles, Cher's mother began acting while working as a waitress.

She changed her name to Georgia Holt and played minor roles in films and on television.

Holt also secured acting parts for her daughters as extras on television shows like The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.

Her mother's relationship with Southall ended when Cher was nine years old, but she considers him her father and remembers him as a "good-natured man who turned belligerent when he drank too much".

Holt remarried and divorced several more times, and she moved her family around the country (including New York, Texas, and California).

They often had little money, and Cher recounted having had to use rubber bands to hold her shoes together.

At one point, her mother left Cher at an orphanage for several weeks.

Although they met every day, both found the experience traumatic.

When Cher was in fifth grade, she produced a performance of the musical Oklahoma! for her teacher and class.

She organized a group of girls, directing and choreographing their dance routines.

Unable to convince boys to participate, she acted the male roles and sang their songs.

By age nine, she had developed an unusually low voice.

She is the only solo artist to date to have a number-one single on a Billboard chart in seven consecutive decades, from the 1960s to the 2020s.

Fascinated by film stars, Cher's role model was Audrey Hepburn, particularly due to her role in the 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Cher began to take after the unconventional outfits and behavior of Hepburn's character.

She was also inspired by Marlene Dietrich, Bette Davis, and Katharine Hepburn.

She was disappointed by the absence of dark-haired Hollywood actresses whom she could emulate.

Known for her distinctive contralto singing voice and for having worked in numerous areas of entertainment, as well as adopting a variety of styles and appearances, Cher rose to fame in 1965 as one half of the folk rock husband-wife duo Sonny & Cher before releasing her first solo top-ten singles "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" and "You Better Sit Down Kids".

Throughout the 1970s, she scored the US Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles "Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves", "Half-Breed", and "Dark Lady", becoming the female solo artist with the most number-one singles in US history at the time.

Cher became a television personality in the 1970s with her CBS shows The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, watched by over 30 million viewers weekly during its three-year run, and the namesake Cher.

After her divorce from Sonny Bono in 1975, Cher released the successful disco album Take Me Home (1979).

In 1982, she made her Broadway debut in the play Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean and starred in its film adaptation.

Cher subsequently garnered critical acclaim for her performances in films such as Silkwood (1983), Mask (1985), and Moonstruck (1987), the last of which won her the Academy Award for Best Actress.

Her music career revival in 1987 saw the releases of rock-inflected albums Cher (1987), Heart of Stone (1989), and Love Hurts (1991), all of which yielded hit singles such as "I Found Someone", "If I Could Turn Back Time", and "Save Up All Your Tears".

She contributed to the soundtrack for her next film, Mermaids (1990), which spawned the UK number-one single "The Shoop Shoop Song (It's in His Kiss)", and made her directorial debut with a segment in the abortion-themed anthology If These Walls Could Talk (1996).

Cher reached a new commercial peak in 1998 with the dance-pop album Believe, which featured pioneering use of Auto-Tune to distort her vocals, known as the "Cher effect".

The title track became the number-one song of 1999 in the US and the best-selling single of all time by a female artist in the UK.

Her 2002–2005 Living Proof: The Farewell Tour became the highest-grossing concert tour by a female artist ever at the time, earning $250 million.

Aside from music and acting, she is noted for her trendsetting, elaborate outfits, plastic surgeries, political views, social media presence, philanthropic endeavors, and social activism, including LGBT rights and HIV/AIDS prevention.

During the 2010s, Cher landed starring roles in the films Burlesque (2010) and Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018).

Having sold 100 million records, Cher is one of the world's best-selling music artists.

Her accolades include a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, an Academy Award, three Golden Globe Awards, a Cannes Film Festival award, the Billboard Icon Award, and awards from the Kennedy Center Honors and the Council of Fashion Designers of America.

She continued to make music, with the albums Closer to the Truth (2013) and Dancing Queen (2018) both debuting at number three on the Billboard 200 and becoming her highest-charting solo albums in the US.