Cher on the trashiest stars in Hollywood: “Makes me look like fucking Mary Poppins”
Few entertainers have enjoyed as erratic, sublime, and enduring a career as Cher.
Starting out as a singer in the 1960s, the daughter of actor Georgia Holt eventually followed her mother into acting. Cher began her acting career in earnest in the early 1980s and stunned the world by winning ‘Best Actress’ at the Oscars for her performance in Moonstruck. Even as she approaches her 80th birthday, she continues to appear in films and TV shows, showcasing her timeless talent.
For a while, Cher had a reputation for being “trashy” and not a serious artist in any sense of the word. That’s why her Oscar win – and her previous nomination in 1984 for Silkwood – stunned so many people into silence. During an interview with Film Comment in 1988, mere months before her famous victory, the Goddess of Pop addressed these comments head-on and, instead of denying them, justified the use of that word.
“There’ve been lots of trashy vamps who’ve been really good actresses,” she asserted. “I mean there’s been lots of trashy people. Marilyn Monroe was a great actress; she was a real trashy woman. How about Mae West? How about Hedy Lamarr? How about Ava Gardner? How about all kinds of actresses who lived a life that makes me look like fucking Mary Poppins, you know?”
While “trashy vamps” probably isn’t an acceptable term in today’s modern society, she isn’t entirely wrong when analysing the personal lives of history’s great female actors. Marylin Monroe was a notorious romancer, allegedly having an affair with John F Kennedy, of all people. Hedy Lamarr was married and divorced six times, Ava Gardner had high-profile romances with Mickey Rooney, Frank Sinatra, and Howard Hughes, while Mae West made a career out of shocking audiences with words that ‘ladies’ simply didn’t say at the time. All of this would have been viewed as ‘trashy’ by contemporary commentators, albeit extremely trivial.
Much like the aforementioned names, Cher’s private life has often been the subject of relentless scrutiny. Her marriage to Sonny Bono was constantly in the headlines, as was her union with Gregg Allman. Stories about her physical appearance and so-called outrageous behaviour have sold millions of newspapers and magazines. Cher, like many female stars before her, has had to endure years of hounding, harassment, and bullying from a predominantly male press, who feel entitled to pass judgment on what is deemed acceptable and what is not.
Cher addressed this gender inequality and society’s obsession with image in her interview. “Nixon looks right, you know? That guy, [Jim] Bakker, he looked right. Ronald Reagan looks right, but what has that got to do with anything?” she said, slamming those who came after her because of her so-called ‘edgy’ appearance. “I could look right if that’s all it was about. I know how to dress, you know, like a Mom, if I want to; but I don’t know what it has to do with who I am, or what my acting skills are, or whether I can sing or not, or…” she never finished that sentence, but you can probably fill in the gaps yourself.
Considering she has been in the public eye for the better part of six decades, Cher has never seemed to care what other people think of her. You might not think she’s the greatest actor of all time, but you have to admire her constant dedication to speaking her own truth and living her life the way she wants to live it.
