The only directors Cher hated working with: “He was an asshole”
In the early 1980s, Cher knew her music career was at a low point, with her 17th studio album, I Paralyze, receiving strong reviews but disastrous sales. During a period of strife, she decided to take a break from music in order to focus on her acting career, which she had dabbled in with Chastity in 1969 but then left dormant for over a decade. Between 1982 and 1985, though, Cher established herself as a leading lady on the rise in Hollywood and, over the next several decades, worked with many of the industry’s top directors. Unfortunately, she absolutely hated two of them – and was recently happy to reveal why.
Before she moved to New York in 1982 to take acting lessons at Lee Strasberg’s famed Actor’s Studio, Cher wasn’t taken seriously as an actor. Even though her music sales were down, she could still make a lot of money from touring. However, she mused: “I was dying inside. Everyone kept saying, ‘Cher, there are people who would give anything to have standing room only at Caesars Palace. It would be the pinnacle of their careers.’ And I kept thinking, ‘Yes, I should be satisfied.’ But I wasn’t satisfied.”
Cher decided that acting was the answer to that artistic satisfaction—and this time, Hollywood seemed more open to her advances. She was soon cast in Robert Altman’s Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, and the Mike Nichols drama Silkwood. However, her next role in 1985’s Mask would be her first attempt at a lead – and it would introduce her to the first director she despised.
Mask was directed by New Hollywood icon Peter Bogdanovich. He steered the biographical drama about Rocky Dennis, the real-life boy with disfiguring craniodiaphyseal dysplasia and the devoted mother who would do anything for him, to great critical and commercial success. Cher was even nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance in the movie. However, that didn’t mean working on the film was a nice experience.
“He was an asshole,” Cher told The Hollywood Reporter about Bogdanovich. “He was not nice to the girls in the film and he was so fucking arrogant. I really, really disliked him.”
Cher remembered a particularly uncomfortable day when Bogdanovich asked her where she thought they should shoot a scene, and she replied, “Well, the kitchen is working pretty well; why don’t we do that again?” To her surprise, the next morning, she claimed he raged at her about how he wouldn’t let her direct the film, telling her she was a nobody in Hollywood terms and that he could cut her out of the movie if he wanted to. She grimaced, “Oh yeah, he was a pig.”
The other director who made it onto Cher’s enemies list was Frank Oz, who she worked with on 1990’s Mermaids – before successfully removing him from the project. Before becoming a director, Oz was best known for being the puppeteer who portrayed several of the iconic characters in The Muppets, including Miss Piggy, Animal, and Fozzie Bear. Unfortunately for him, that association with Jim Henson’s beloved creation may have left him tagged forever in Cher’s mind.
“I actually got the guy from The Muppets fired,” claimed Cher, refusing to even mention Oz by name. “I said, ‘Either you’re going, or I’m going,’ which is a shame because he’s a really good director, but he had a thing about me. He would go, ‘At least my wife loves me.'”
In truth, it’s never been entirely clear what Oz did that rubbed Cher the wrong way, but she’s gone on record with her dislike of him before. In 1990, when she was developing a reputation as a difficult actress because she clashed with Oz and Mermaids’ first director, Lasse Hallstrom, she still told The Los Angeles Times exactly what was on her mind.
Cher argued, “I feel if you’re stupid, I’m difficult. Lasse Hallstrom was nuts, and Frank Oz is an idiot. Just because ‘director’ is behind their name doesn’t mean that everything that comes out of their mouth is etched in stone”.
