Steve Antin: the director that Cher called “really terrible”
Music is Cher’s first love and will always be her preferred method of artistic expression. However, she’s also a genuine Hollywood star, and like most actors, there’s a stain on her CV that she wishes she could erase.
Following her starring role in Tea With Mussolini in 1999, Cher took a sabbatical from acting and needed a special project to lure her back into the film world. Her first role back was the 2010 musical Burlesque, which also starred Christina Aguilera, Stanley Tucci, Kristen Bell, Alan Cumming, and Cam Gigandet.
Initially, Cher was reluctant to participate in the project and turned down the advances of director Steve Antin. However, after Antin worked his persuasion on the singer, she changed her heart and decided to accept the proposal. If she could turn back time, Cher would have trusted her gut instinct and stuck to her guns.
In a conversation with the Irish Independent in 2010, Cher admitted: “I drove all of them crazy” with her indecision. The singer said she “wasn’t exactly who she turned out to be on screen, and I needed her to be that character”.
When Antin heard Cher was having second thoughts, he found out she was nearby in the Sony Offices and made it his objective to make her do a U-turn. He told the publication: “There we were, stalking Cher for an hour and a half. It was insane.”
Cher added: “Well, Clint doesn’t let you say ‘no,’ and I wanted to sing in a movie. I have had so many dips in my career and so many times where I thought, ‘How am I going to get this back? What am I going to do?'”
The film was met coldly by reviewers and only has a 37% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Although Burlesque was somewhat of a commercial success at the box office, Cher detested the experience of working with Antin, who she believed was why the film failed.
“It could have been a much better film. It was always sad that it was not a good film,” Cher told The Guardian in 2013. “Terrible director! Really terrible director. And really terrible script. I remember him saying to me, ‘I don’t care about what you say, I just want to shoot the dance numbers.’ Had it been shorter, it would have squeaked by and been a really good popcorn movie.”
Thankfully, Cher didn’t let the experience scar her from featuring in further films. In recent years, she’s appeared in Zookeeper, Bobbleheads: The Movie, and most notably, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. However, it’s unlikely we’ll ever see Cher feature in another production by Steve Antin.
