Cher Born: Queen of Reinvention Arrives

Cher was born Cherilyn Sarkisian in El Centro, California on May 20, 1946, the daughter of an actress with Cherokee and English ancestry and an Armenian-American truck driver who was absent for most of her childhood. She dropped out of school at sixteen, moved to Los Angeles, and met Sonny Bono in a coffee shop when she was seventeen. He was eleven years older and working for Phil Spector's record label. They married in 1964 and scored their first hit with "I Got You Babe" in 1965, which went to number one. The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour ran on CBS from 1971 to 1974, making them one of the most popular entertainment couples on American television. They divorced in 1975. Her solo career produced hits across five decades, from "Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves" and "Half-Breed" in the 1970s to "If I Could Turn Back Time" in the 1989 and "Believe" in 1998. "Believe" was the first major pop hit to use Auto-Tune as a deliberate vocal effect, a production technique that became ubiquitous in the 2000s. She has sold over 100 million records worldwide. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Moonstruck in 1987, a role that required her to play a Brooklyn bookkeeper who falls in love with Nicolas Cage. She had been considered a television personality rather than a serious actress. The Oscar changed that. She also appeared in Silkwood, Mask, and Mermaids. Her ability to reinvent herself became her defining characteristic. She transitioned from folk-pop duo to variety show host to disco artist to rock singer to Oscar-winning actress to dance-pop icon to Las Vegas residency headliner. Each reinvention came with a new visual identity: the Bob Mackie gowns, the leather jackets, the tattoos, the ever-changing wigs. She has been a public figure for over sixty years. Few entertainers in American history have sustained cultural relevance across that span. Her career is itself an argument that reinvention, rather than consistency, is the key to longevity in popular culture.