Tragic Details About Cher's Life

Cher's childhood was incredibly chaotic. Speaking to Vanity Fair in 2010, the "Believe" hitmaker shared that her mother, Georgia Holt, realized she couldn't see a future with her husband, John Sarkisian, soon after falling pregnant. While Holt initially believed that an abortion was the best course of action, she couldn't go through with it. In a 2024 appearance on "LIVE with Kelly and Mark," the music icon confirmed that her father had dropped her off at an orphanage as an infant so that Holt could have the opportunity to work hard enough to make ends meet. 

Meanwhile, in Cher's self-titled memoir, which was released that same year, she wrote that Sarkisian, who was notably a drug and gambling addict, ended up leaving their family when she was still just a baby. Ultimately, Holt brought little Cher back home, and she only saw her father again when she was 11. As a single mother, Holt tried her best to create a good life for her child, but times were still incredibly tough. In her Vanity Fair interview, the "Moonstruck" star recalled how she would tie rubber bands around her school shoes to ensure the soles remained intact. 

Furthermore, the future Oscar winner wound up in several wildly different homes throughout her formative years because her mom married eight times overall. As Cher reflected back on those days, she admitted, "We ate a can of stew or a can of beans one week, but then sometimes we lived in Beverly Hills. It was a very strange life." While things started looking up once when she entered adulthood, the opposite turned out to be true.

16-year-old Cher's path crossed with 27-year-old Sonny Bono's at a party in 1962. Speaking on SiriusXM's "The Cher Show: Making the Musical," the Grammy winner reminisced about how she asked him if she could be his roommate, and he obliged. Eventually, their platonic relationship became romantic, and the happy couple married in 1964. Sonny and Cher went on to have great success as a musical duo and welcomed their son, Chaz Bono, in 1969 before parting ways in 1975. In the "Burlesque" star's 2024 memoir, she pointed out that "The Sonny & Cher Show" had changed her husband for the worse and turned him into somebody she simply couldn't love anymore. "I was able to live with him because I compartmentalized my feelings and was used to censoring what I said and did around him," the "Strong Enough" singer wrote, per Today. 

Eventually, though, Cher couldn't ignore her sadness anymore and even started feeling suicidal. Although she considered taking her life on several occasions, the legendary singer stopped herself for the sake of her loved ones. Cher also opened up about their marital problems in a 2010 Parade interview, asserting, "He didn't want me to grow up or have any freedom. I wasn't allowed to do anything except work. We worked more than we lived." The "If I Could Turn Back Time" hitmaker also disclosed that Sonny had cheated on her with multiple women over the course of their lengthy relationship. Likewise, in her memoir, Cher revealed that Sonny had an affair with his secretary while she was still reeling from her third miscarriage. Even the end of Sonny and Cher's marriage was full of tragic details.  

Cher's first date with Gregg Allman foretold how their marriage would go. In the rocker's 2012 memoir, "My Cross To Bear," he discussed how they headed to a mutual friend's place and he disappeared to the bathroom to do heroin. Greg eventually passed out, and when he came to, the musician asked Cher about their plans for the night, and she told him she planned to leave. But the "Mermaids" star wasn't actually deterred as they had a Las Vegas wedding in 1975. However, Cher filed to end her marriage with The Allman Brothers front-man just nine days later. In her memoir, the "After All" songstress divulged that she made the decision after realizing that her husband was still using drugs even when she was pregnant with their first child. 

While Gregg argued that he wasn't using, he still entered rehab and therapy. During one session, the rocker even admitted to his wife that he felt "pressure to be Mr. Cher," per Us Weekly. Although she ended up staying with him, the celebrity couple continued getting into heated arguments over his substance abuse issues. However, Cher only realized their marriage was beyond saving shortly after their son, Elijah Blue Allman, arrived in 1976. She recalled how "Gregory had a paranoid breakdown one night and insisted he saw men with guns in the backyard," and this behavior led her to finally grasp that she didn't want to raise children around him. They officially divorced in 1978.

Cher has a sad relationship with her son, Elijah Blue Allman. Speaking to Entertainment Tonight in 2014, the musician acknowledged that he started using drugs when he was just 11 years old and soon grew reliant on them to cope with the tragic story of his life. However, Allman turned things around and got sober in 2008. Then, in January 2024, Cher sought a conservatorship over her youngest child because he was "unable to manage his assets due to severe mental health and substance abuse issues," according to court documents obtained by People at the time. 

She claimed that Allman was recklessly spending his trust fund money to fuel his addiction and endangering his life in the process. The Grammy winner also posited that Allman's wife, Marieangela King, couldn't take over as conservator because "their tumultuous relationship has been marked by a cycle of drug addiction and mental health crises." A few months beforehand, King filed her own court documents proclaiming that her mother-in-law had employed men to kidnap Allman from a hotel room while they were celebrating their anniversary in November 2022. 

The couple eloped back in 2014, and Cher's youngest son later told the Daily Mail that his mother wasn't invited to their ceremony, because, "I wasn't going to wait for anyone's approval and congratulations, just like I've never waited for any of that my whole life." Although the rocker later sought to divorce King in November 2021, Allman dismissed his filing shortly after the pop icon's conservatorship bid against him began. Ultimately, though, Cher only stopped seeking a conservatorship over her son in September 2024. The matter was settled privately.

During a 1990 interview with Vanity Fair, Cher remembered how she started feeling increasingly tired on the set of "The Witches of Eastwick" in 1986, and her fatigue only grew more intense while she subsequently worked on "Mermaids." Meanwhile, in her 2008 USA Today interview, the celebrated actor noted that she sought treatment from several doctors in Germany, but many of them didn't believe her illness and turned Cher away. 

She also told BBC that she was eventually correctly diagnosed with having Epstein-Barr Virus and chronic fatigue. However, in the singer's 2018 New York Times interview, she confessed that her diagnosis didn't make her life any easier, explaining, "For two years, I couldn't work. It was terrible. I ended the second year with pneumonia. All these movie offers were coming in, but I had to turn them all down. I was really, really upset about it." 

Of course, no amount of pain could keep Cher from doing what she loves, and she returned to work as soon as she could. Unfortunately, her brief hiatus caused her to lose some of the momentum she had gained in Hollywood. However, her triumphant comeback may have been harder than we knew since the singer informed USA Today that pneumonia had nearly taken her life. Additionally, in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Cher clarified that she kept performing because she was under the impression that she had bronchitis.

After Sonny Bono unexpectedly passed away in 1998 after getting into a skiing accident, Cher gave a moving eulogy at his funeral. After reminiscing about all of the sweet moments from their early days together, which the singer promised she would always hold dear, Cher concluded by saying, "When I was young, there was this section in the Reader's Digest. It was called 'The Most Unforgettable Character I've Ever Met.' And for me that person is Sonny Bono. And no matter how long I live or who I meet in my life, that person will always be Sonny for me," (via YouTube). The "Shoop Shoop Song" hitmaker undoubtedly found some solace in knowing that she had healed her turbulent relationship with Bono before his passing, at the very least. In her 2023 chat with People, Cher professed how her ex-husband had acknowledged all the pain he had caused her and even apologized for it. 

Although his apology didn't magically fix all the heartache in their marriage, it put the exes on the right track to finding greener pastures. Still, when The Guardian inquired about the love of Cher's life, she named both Robert Camilletti and Gregory Allman. As a result, she was devastated when Allman passed away from liver cancer in 2017. The Grammy winner took to X to admit that she couldn't even put her grief into words. Cher's short post had a personal touch because she used their nicknames for each other: Chooch and Gui Gui. Later, she also shared an X post gushing about what an amazing man her ex-husband was.