Cher

Biography

The beat goes on ... and on ... and as strong as ever for this superstar entertainer who has well surpassed the four-decade mark while improbably transforming herself from an artificial, glossy "flashionplate" singer into a serious, Oscar-worthy, dramatic actress ... and back again! With more ups and downs than the 2008 Dow Jones Industrial Average, Cher managed to rise like a phoenix from the ashes each time she was down and counted out, somehow re-inventing herself with every changing decade and finding herself on top all over again. As a singer Cher is the only performer to have earned "top 10" hit singles in four consecutive decades; as an actress, she and Barbra Streisand are the only two Best Actress Oscar winners to have a #1 hit song on the Billboard charts. At age 62, Cher has yet to decide to get completely off her fabulous roller coaster ride, although she has threatened to on occasion. The daughter of a truck driver, John Sarkisian, and an Arkansas-born mother, Georgia Holt (the former Jackie Jean Crouch), Cher was born in El Centro, California, on May 20, 1946. She has a sister, Georganne LaPiere. Cher is of Armenian heritage on her father's side, and of English and German, with more distant Irish, Dutch, and French, heritage on her mother's side. The father deserted the family when Cher was young, and she was raised by their mother who later married Gilbert LaPiere, a banker. Cher's mother, who had aspirations of being an actress and model herself, paid for Cher's acting classes despite her daughter having undiagnosed dyslexia, which acutely affected her studies. Frustrated, Cher quit Fresno High School at the age of 16 in search of her dream. At that time, she had a brief relationship with actor Warren Beatty. Meeting the quite older (by 11 years) Sonny…