Tragic Details About Cher's Son Chaz Bono

The following article mentions transphobia, addiction, and eating disorders.

The son of Cher and Sonny Bono, Chaz Bono unwittingly found himself thrust into the spotlight from a young age. As a trans man, that intrusion into his life only became more pronounced as he got older. "I was worried about being followed by the tabloids again," he told ABC News in 2011. "I risked a lot but I finally got to the place where I knew this is what I'm supposed to do." Subsequently, he has decided to reclaim this publicity, using his high-profile platform to help others. An actor, an author, and a reality star, Chaz is among the celebrity transgender kids helping a whole new generation of trans folks through visibility and representation.

But behind his affable and positive persona, Chaz has also led a tragic life. "I lived my life before really in my head and completely disconnected from my body," he told the Advocate. "I didn't like what was reflected in the mirror, it wasn't me. It wasn't how I saw myself. So, there was a huge disconnect with myself physically. Now, it's about being able to pursue the life I always wanted to have." 

The star has had to overcome a number of obstacles to get to the esteemed position in which he now finds himself. These are the tragic details about Cher's son, Chaz Bono.

Growing up, Chaz Bono had a complicated relationship with his father, singer-turned-politician Sonny Bono. Surprisingly, Sonny was much more accepting than Cher when Chaz came out as a kid, despite Cher being a vocal ally of the LGBTQ+ community. "I wanted to be just like him, so any parent is going to love that," he told Oprah.

But the relationship between father and son soon fell apart. As Cher explained to Vanity Fair in 2010, Sonny was a good father as long as his kids toed the line. "Chaz had a dad for a long time," said Cher, who has also accused her ex of being controlling and abusive. "Sonny was a great parent for a young child — even like 12, 13. But the moment you had ideas that were contrary, he was not quite as interested." As a Republican congressman, Sonny voted against marriage equality, leading to a rift with his son. "I took it very personally," Chaz told The Advocate (via CBS News) in 1998. "It put a tremendous amount of distance between us."

At the time of Sonny's death in 1998, he and his son weren't on speaking terms. Accordingly, Chaz was left grieving for both his dad and the absence of a reconciliation before his passing. "We both wussed out when it came to confronting these issues," he told SFGate a few months after his father's fatal skiing accident. "Now I feel like s*** about it, although I've come to peace with it."

From a young age, Chaz Bono felt like an outsider. His parents presented him as female, which made him feel incredibly uncomfortable. "My seventh and eighth grade year was a particularly hellacious year for me," he told ABC News. "Puberty. And I was at a school that just wasn't appropriate for my needs. It was just very straight, strict academic school." 

In his book "Family Outing," he recalled his mother being aghast when he said that he wanted to wear traditional boys' clothing rather than feminine attire. Considering the prejudice he faced within his own family, Bono felt far from ready to come out. But in 1990, Bono, who hadn't yet come out as transgender, was outed as gay by the tabloid Star. At the time, he was terrified of his identity being made public out of fear that it would hinder his career prospects. This made the public outing all the more hurtful. 

Suddenly, he saw his face all over tabloids, something he found traumatic. "It was the most difficult thing that had happened to me," he told Vanity Fair in 1998. "I have since dealt with things that have been more difficult. I think any gay person knows what it feels like. You can imagine what it's like when the whole world finds out before you're ready. It was very overwhelming." LGBTQ+ organizations are largely in agreement that outing is dangerous, and people shouldn't be forced to come out if they're not ready.

In 1998, Sonny Bono went missing during a family skiing excursion to South Lake Tahoe, California. During his trip, he had flouted a number of skiing regulations and refused to wear a helmet, though he assured his wife, Mary Bono, that he would wear head protection during their next skiing trip. He was found dead three days later, having crashed into a tree and suffered massive head injuries, aged 62.

Losing a father was all the more painful for Sonny's son, Chaz Bono, due to their unresolved conflict. "It was extremely hard on Chaz," Mary, Sonny's widow, told the Reno Gazette Journal. "You've probably read that Chaz and Sonny were estranged at the time over politics. That's the lesson everyone needs to heed, this not-to-speak-to-each-other over a silly difference. I think it's much harder on Chaz because of that." Speaking to CNN following his father's death, Chaz said that the traumatic experience made him reluctant to discuss politics with his family going forward.

In 2015, Chaz was able to channel his sorrow through his work. Appearing on stage, he used his relationship with Sonny as inspiration for his performance as a father in "Proof." "We all pull from different places, and I pulled a few things from my dad's personality that I think work well," he explained to People. "I remember our close relationship from the other side, and I tried to flip it a little bit to find the specialness of it from a father's perspective."

In 1992, Chaz Bono began a relationship with Joan Stephens. A friend of Cher, Stephens was two decades older than Bono, who was in his early 20s at the time, and had known him all his life. When Stephens was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a type of cancer that forms in the lymphatic system, Bono became her carer.

In his memoir "The End of Innocence," he recalled the pain of watching Stephens deteriorate in devastating detail, losing control of her bladder and bowels and experiencing painful sores as a result of her illness. "The woman who had always encouraged me to do things for myself had turned into a sickly, terrified, insecure, completely dependent person," he wrote. Though he loved Stephens unconditionally, he feared that he would be unable to get disturbing images of her out of his mind should she ever recover from cancer. "I didn't know whether she'd ever be able to return to the full-of-life person she was, and if she did, I wasn't sure I'd be able to think of her in the same way I had," he added.

But Stephens didn't recover and in 1994 died of the disease. Her death, though devastating, ultimately inspired Bono to come out. "There were so many things Joan and I didn't do," he told Entertainment Weekly. "I didn't want to live feeling so bad about a part of myself anymore."

In 2009, Chaz Bono came out as a trans man. Famed for her daring outfits and unapologetically authentic persona, Cher has long been a queer icon. But Cher revealed it wasn't easy to accept Chaz Bono at first.

In 2023, Cher admitted to the Los Angeles Times that her inability to accept her son from the outset was incongruous with her status as an LGBTQ+ champion. "That was difficult for me," she said. "It shouldn't have been because, you know, I've had gay friends forever. I just met some beautiful trans chicks and we have an affinity. Now I'm totally fine. But it's hard to lose one child to get a new one, especially so late." Bono didn't judge his mother for her initial reservations about his transition, telling Oprah that he understood why it might have been difficult for her. "You have this expectation of your baby girl and how that's going to be, and I didn't act anything like she probably imagined," he reflected. 

Mother and son went to counseling together, but things got progressively worse between them. They didn't speak for months, until Cher finally got in touch after her boyfriend begged her to do so. Now, Cher embraces her son's transgender identity, telling CNN that she soon realized how much happier Chaz became after living as his authentic self. "[He's] so unbelievably happy, and I don't know what the people's problems are," she said in reference to those who still refuse to accept transgender people.

In 2011, Chaz Bono was happier than ever and living his best life after coming out. But some sought to put a damper on his trans joy. Controversial tabloid the National Enquirer, which built a reputation on salacious and false headlines long before the term "fake news" entered the cultural lexicon, published a cruel story claiming that Bono would be dead in four years. The story, entitled "Chaz Bono: Only 4 Years to Live! Liver Damage Agony," attempted to draw a parallel between Bono's gender-affirming care and an untimely death, something that he found deeply hurtful.

Accordingly, his legal team issued a cease and desist. "This is absolutely outrageous, false, fabricated, and highly defamatory," his lawyer, Dina LaPolt, wrote in a filing obtained by E! News. "The salacious and inflammatory headline and article were crafted for the malicious purpose of discriminating against our client's gender and sexual orientation."

The outlet interviewed an apparent doctor, Patrick Wanis, who claimed that testosterone and a supposed risk of suicidal ideation meant that Bono wouldn't live for very long (on the contrary, studies show that gender-affirming care can actually help trans people live longer by alleviating suicidal thoughts and depression). "He is not a physician and has no specialty in transgender health issues," said LaPolt. The following year, the tabloid continued to publish fallacious stories about Bono, claiming that he was feuding with his mom over a recent breakup. Bono confirmed to blogger Cher News that the story was false.

Chaz Bono and his fiancée, Jennifer Elia, had some difficulties during the early days of the former's transition. During this period, Elia was struggling with substance use and stopped sharing a bed with Bono. "I felt that his machismo had sort of spiked, he was quicker-tempered, and coupled with the fact that I was in grad school, writing a 150-page thesis, and had relapsed on alcohol ... things got very tense," Elia told The Daily Beast.

Although Elia told Oprah in 2011 that she had no intention of breaking up with Bono despite the couple's difficulties, the pair did call off their engagement that year. They had been together for six years. Speaking to HuffPost, a friend divulged that Bono and Elia both had trauma due to their shared experiences of substance use, which partly contributed to the split. "Chaz has been living in the guest house for some time now," the friend said. "Both of them had been in therapy to try and save this relationship, but in the end, it became clear to both Chaz and Elia that this wasn't going to work."

Since then, Bono has met a new lady love, Shara Blue Mathes, and news of their engagement was announced in 2024. InTouch reported that Bono had banned his mother from attending his wedding, as he supposedly didn't want her causing drama. Cher was allegedly devastated by her son's snub .

Following his father's death in 1998, Chaz Bono struggled with substance use. He became so unwell that his addiction issues led to liver failure. "Getting sober was like the first step toward anything because you can't do anything when you're in that state," he told Oprah.

In her 2010 interview with Vanity Fair, Cher reflected on her family history of trauma and addiction, which has extended to her children. Despite substance use being normalized to an extent to the singer, she still found it difficult to cope with her son's issues. "It's weird, because both of my children had the same drug problems as their fathers — same drug of choice," she said. "My father was a heroin addict, and my sister's father was an alcoholic. But it jumped us." In an interview with Time, Bono said that a desire to come out propelled him to get sober.

After entering substance-use recovery in 2004, Bono decided to take the next step toward prioritizing his wellbeing. The star has also lived with an eating disorder. As he told The Daily Beast in 2013, he ended up replacing drugs and alcohol with food, the only thing that gave him happiness at his lowest point. These body image issues had always been dormant, however. "I was put on diets while I was a kid, but I never had conversations with my mother about body image," he said. Seeking the help of a specialist, Bono was able to address his underlying issues with food.

From a young age, Chaz Bono battled internalized transphobia. As he explained in his 2011 memoir, "Transition: The Story of How I Became a Man," he long believed that there was something abnormal about him. "I grew up in a society of rigid gender roles and had the same distance and lack of understanding about what being transgender really means," he wrote. "For years I fought that secret lurking within me with thoughts such as, 'Trans people aren't "normal" — how could they be?'" In time, Bono embraced his authentic self, but he found that other people weren't so accepting.

It's this prejudice that prevented him from coming out for many years, as he was terrified of being hounded by the tabloids (as happened when he was outed as gay). In 2011, Cher defended her son when he was subjected to online hate after being cast in "Dancing With the Stars." That year, Chelsea Handler was criticized for making a series of offensive, transphobic jokes about Bono. He was also deadnamed, which is extremely harmful for trans people; for instance, his 2011 profile with Oprah, though well-meaning, repeatedly referred to him by his deadname and also used female pronouns in the beginning.

But Bono is determined to counter prejudice wherever he sees it. Much like "Euphoria" star Hunter Schafer, who has said that she no longer wants to play transgender characters, Chaz has made a concerted effort to take on cisgender roles as a means of normalizing seeing trans folks on screen.

Much like Chaz Bono, Cher's son, Elijah Blue Allman, has also led a tragic life. The singer has been estranged from her younger son for quite some time, blaming this on his alleged ongoing struggle with addiction. 

Cher's relationship with Elijah Blue Allman may be sad, but he has always been able to turn to his big brother when in need. "The moment Elijah gets in trouble, he runs to Chaz. He just hightails his a** right there," Cher told Vanity Fair in 2010. At some point, however, the siblings' relationship appeared to sour. Speaking to Entertainment Tonight, Allman discussed feeling like an outcast as a child and revealed that he had drifted apart from his brother.

In 2024, Cher requested a temporary conservatorship over Allman due to his apparent issues with substance use and mental illness, though this was denied. Bono ended up being dragged into the legal battle, with Allman demanding that his brother be questioned under oath. Allman's wife, Marieangela King, claimed that both Cher and Bono were contributing to his mental health issues and had engaged in abusive behavior. "I believe that people in Elijah's family are emotional triggers for him," she said in court, per Radar. "I have witnessed and experienced abusive behavior coming mostly from Elijah's mother — the petitioner herein but also from his siblings — Chaz and Devon." Cher dropped her conservatorship bid in September 2024.

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues or an eating disorder, or has experienced a hate crime, contact the relevant resources below:

• The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

• The National Eating Disorders Association website or contact NEDA's Live Helpline at 1-800-931-2237. You can also receive 24/7 Crisis Support via text (send NEDA to 741-741).

• The VictimConnect Hotline by phone at 1-855-4-VICTIM or by chat for more information or assistance in locating services to help. If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call 911.