“Happy Halloween!” Cher booms down the phone. A moment of silence follows as I recompose myself, then she adds, with a touch of glee: “Did I give you a fright?” I’m not exactly frightened, but hearing that sonorous voice say my name back to me—a voice I’ve heard my entire life on the radio, on the TV, and in my head every time I read one of her Tweets—does feel a little surreal.
Stars may come and go, but there’s only ever been one Cher. One of the world’s greatest entertainers, her career has spanned six decades and half a dozen disciplines; she’s been garlanded with everything from an Oscar to a Grammy to the best actress prize at Cannes Film Festival, and feted by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for her music, GLAAD for her activism, and the CFDA for her often imitated (but never duplicated) eye for fashion. She’s resuscitated her career more times than you can even count, from a boho countercultural icon, to a leather-clad rock chick, to an acclaimed actor, to an imperious disco diva. (As the saying goes, if there’s a nuclear war, only two species are likely to survive: cockroaches and Cher.)
What those many transformations speak to, though, is not just Cher’s remarkable knack for reinvention, but her extraordinary resilience: a quality that has never been captured with the same candor and scope as her rip-roaring, deliciously readable new memoir, titled, simply, The Memoir: Part One. (The book has been split into two parts, with the first half out now, and the second arriving in 2025—because, as Cher’s publishers HarperCollins succinctly put it: “It’s a life too immense for only one book.” Well, quite.) Yet despite the forensic eye for detail you’ll find within the book’s pages, it was a long and meandering journey to getting her story down with the honesty it required. “Truthfully, I started work on it at least two times, maybe even three,” Cher explains. “But I always thought, ‘You know what? If you’re going to write this book, you’ve got to tell more.’”
The book offers a bracingly candid account of Cher’s turbulent, itinerant childhood: Her neglectful father deserted the family for heroin and gambling, while her glamorous mother struggled to make ends meet constantly moving around the country, and was even—in a particularly devastating chapter—forced to deposit Cher at a Baptist orphanage in Scranton for an extended period while working shifts in an all-night diner at the other end of the city. We follow Cher through her teenage years (and a brief dalliance with Warren Beatty), her relationship with Sonny Bono, and their rapid ascent to fame, her path criss-crossing a glittering cast of 1960s and ’70s pop culture icons.
There are the highs of motherhood and the lows of abusive relationships, as Bono’s suffocating cruelty in the final years of their marriage leads her to consider suicide. There is the promise of reinvention: the book ends with Cher catching up with her old friend Francis Ford Coppola in her dressing room at Caesar’s Palace, considering her first leap into the world of cinema. And for fashion fans, there are plenty of fascinating insights into her rise as a style icon, from her first time meeting Bob Mackie at a fitting for an appearance on The Carol Burnett Show, to her memories of working with Diana Vreeland on her string of Vogue covers in the 1970s.
But the constant through it all? Cher’s unmistakable voice, which rings out, loud and clear, from every sentence: her compassion, her wisdom, her heart, and, of course, her bone-dry sense of humor. Here, Cher talks to Vogue about her journey to writing the memoir, why the chapters on abortion and reproductive rights feel more timely than ever, and how she gets dressed for a Halloween party. (Especially when there’s a decent chance you’ll run into someone dressed as you.) We also spoke in the days leading up to the U.S. presidential election—and Cher’s insights were, as ever, exceedingly prescient.
Vogue: Good morning, Cher! Where am I finding you at this hour?
Cher: You’re finding me sitting on my bed, looking at the ocean, trying to decide which Halloween party I’m going to go to tonight.
So you have multiple options?
I have a few, yes. My goddaughter is throwing one. I don’t go to a lot of parties, but I expect this will be fun because her friends are fun. It’s going to be great. And then, tomorrow night we’re going to a Universal party, and it’s Halloween Horror Night, so I’m excited about that.
When did you first start working on your memoir, and what prompted you to begin writing it?
I don’t know exactly what prompted me, but I started work on it a long, long time ago. I quickly realized there were a few things that I didn’t want in there. Truthfully, I started work on it at least two times, maybe even three, but I always thought, “You know what? If you’re going to write this book, you’ve got to tell more.” And in the beginning, I just didn’t want to. Then eventually, I realized, “Oh, well, who cares?”
What was it that you were reluctant to share? Or that you were struggling to get down on the page?
I truly can’t remember the individual things, because once I started writing, I just started writing. But there were moments in the beginning where I thought, I don’t want to go there. I thought too, I won’t be able to explain certain things about my relationships—how could I do that? I was really concerned.
There’s a remarkable level of detail in the chapters about your childhood. Was that all plumbed from your own memories, or did you talk to others who were there at the time to piece it together?
Well, my mom always told me things from my childhood, but she also left out some important things. As a teenager, or even as a child, you don’t hop a freight train if you’re not… different. [Laughs.] So I think my mom was ready for it. But my grandmother? When I was in my early 30s, she came backstage one night when I was getting ready to go on, and she arrived with a high chair that had Bambi on it and said, “When you lived with us, this was your high chair.” And then my grandmother started telling me these stories, and I just thought, Oh, my God. I thought, Whatever I feel, I have an audience out there waiting, and I just don’t have time to feel this now. I’ll feel it later.
The first part of the book charts the story of your childhood and your ascent to fame, and you’re very candid about the challenges you faced. Was it difficult to revisit that period of your life?
No. I mean, not like you think it would be. It’s pragmatic. It was what it was. While I was doing it, I didn’t like it too much, but it was also… we were in such a time crunch [back then] that we were working constantly—many, many, many hours a day with no days off. It started to irritate my psyche.
Did you feel any kind of weight off your shoulders after getting it down on the page? Was it therapeutic in any sense?
I don’t know. I’m not sure. To be honest, I just don’t know.
Fair enough. I wanted to ask you about the opening of the book, with you watching Elvis on TV as a kid. Why did that feel like such a formative moment for you?
Well, musically, I just thought everybody sang all the time. My mom and my grandfather, and my uncle, we sang all the time. And when I saw Elvis, when I heard him—and my mother and I both loved him, which I think was great because my girlfriends were jealous, because most of their mothers were appalled—when my mom took me to see him, it was a huge turning point in my life because I just thought, that’s what I want to be. I want to be him.
Your voice is very present in the book in a way I was surprised by and enjoyed. There are a lot of Cher-isms in there: describing a childhood home as a “funky-ass log cabin” and sprinkling in a few WTFs here and there…
What do you mean?
I suppose…
I know what you just said, but what do you actually mean?
I guess that it’s not written like a… stuffy, old-fashioned biography.
Well, I do say it was very Dickensian at some point.
You did. And it is Dickensian, in many ways.
It was what it was. It was what it was, and you just live it. When you’re busy living it, and something happens, you go, ‘Oh God.’ But then when you think back on it, maybe it wasn’t so hard.
I think what I was trying to get at is that your sense of humor always feels woven into the story, even during some of the darkest periods of your life. Has humor always helped you confront those more difficult moments?
Well, usually with the “What the fuck?” part. Really, it’s like, “What were these people thinking?” Because really, What were these people thinking? Weren’t they ashamed of themselves? I do think though, my God, I’m so lucky. I had such a cool life. Even if it was difficult, it was really interesting. And maybe people will love it or hate it. [Pauses.]
I don’t think l could describe it as either loving or hating it…
Were you gobsmacked? [Laughs.]
I was! But I was also very moved. A big part of it is you recounting the story of your mother considering an abortion when she was pregnant with you. I know it’s a subject you’ve spoken about before, but the grace you held around the choices your mom was facing in that moment felt very powerful, and timely.
I didn’t really think about... actually no, I think about that all the time. I think about how we have gone so backwards, and God knows where it’s going to end because I have no idea. You know things happen in your life, and you make some peace with them. I’m a little bit strange when it comes to those things. You have good times and you have bad times, and you can’t control either one.
Reproductive rights are at the forefront of the political conversation right now—a conversation you’ve been very outspoken about throughout your entire career. How are you feeling in this moment?
Scared to death. What do you think I’m feeling? I don’t know how far back we’re going to go, but I think we will go back in every area where we’ve made progress, and it scares me to death because this is going to be a bumpy ride. I know that’s very American, but that’s how it feels. It’s the scariest thing that’s happened in my lifetime. And we’re going to go backwards in every way we’ve made progress. We’re going to go back so much farther than we made the progress from. Do you know what I mean? I don’t even know how to explain my feelings about it. I’m terrified.
I was also really struck by your observational writing throughout the book. I loved the weird details you picked out from the milieu of friends that surrounded your mom when you were growing up in Hollywood, and the clothes they wore.
Well, my mom and her friends, these women were some of the most beautiful women I ever saw, and have ever seen. I think my mom was the poorest of them all, but even though she didn’t have money, she would save and save and save and buy one dress that she could wear that was fashion-forward and looked beautiful. All of my mother’s friends were so beautiful, and so... gracious but funky, balls to the wall. Fashion and makeup were a huge part of my life, and I was always so interested in watching these women put on their clothes and high heels. And it wasn’t Andy Hardy and it wasn’t Father Knows Best it was something that didn’t exist. Kind of like Sonny and I! That fashion didn’t exist until we started it. You might not have liked it, but it was fashion.
Completely. Your looks with Sonny were pivotal in defining 20th-century fashion, and you were one of the first proper, 360-degree youth pop cultural phenomena. I loved reading about how people responded to you arriving in London. They were all obsessed because they’d never seen anyone dressed like that before.
In America, it was terrible. It was terrible! And the moment we got to London, it was amazing. We went to a candy store, and we walked in, and there was an old lady behind the register, and she took out her autograph book and said, “Could I have your autograph?” And I just stood there, and I was confounded, because people at home, the grown-ups, really didn’t like us at all. They were afraid and appalled at the way we looked. England was the beginning. Without coming there, without Great Britain, I’m not sure we would’ve existed.
You also write in the book about your first shoots for Vogue and how exciting that was. Do those memories still resonate with you today?
That was all due to Mrs. Vreeland. She was such a forward thinker and none of the girls that she put in there were thought of as beautiful or model-like, or... we were strange, but it turned out to be fabulous, because she brought a whole new world into Vogue.
And how does it feel at this point, knowing the book is going to be in readers’ hands in just a few weeks after having worked on it for so many years?
Well, I don’t know what’s going to actually happen. People that I talk to seem to like it and seem to be surprised. And I think that what I tried to do more than anything was present stories, not information because you could go anywhere to get information, but stories are hard to come by. Stories have to come from the person.
I hope you have a great Halloween, also. Have you decided what you’re going to dress up as?
I don’t know. I was just thinking about that, actually. I was thinking about makeup and doing something like a beautiful vampire or skull—a beautiful skull. But I have no idea. I just thought of those things because I want to be interesting. I don’t want to try to be like myself. I don’t want to be Cher.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
