This attitude has long made Streep the perfect photographic subject for Lacombe. “I’m so anti all the artifice,” Lacombe says. “What I do is very simple; I’m not interested in transforming people.”
She gestures to the enormous coffee-table book of her work, Lacombe, which was published in 2008 and contains several riveting pictures of Streep. “To me, that’s Meryl, not an actress,” Lacombe says. “But it’s very rare. Even actresses in their 20s and 30s cannot look at themselves that way. They all long to be looking like a model—and then they wonder, Why am I not Meryl Streep? To me, physical beauty is not enough; it’s not interesting. Beauty is everything. You want to have someone who will also be funny, who will also be moving, who will also be intelligent—someone who will have some contribution to bring, not just a look. Meryl is interesting; she is very funny and very smart.
“But I don’t think there is ever a moment when she is enjoying the process of being photographed. Most actresses, or women, will find a moment where they enjoy being looked at, if it is in the best light and with good intent. I don’t think Meryl has that moment—ever. She’s not interested in looking more beautiful or making more time so we can do better. I understand not wanting to be in front of the camera; for somebody very well known, it’s a complete bore and an imposition. I’m sure she sees that as Being Meryl Streep, and it’s not such an interesting part to play for her. She has a lot of patience and enjoyment if she is in character, but not if she’s herself.”
Streep’s explanation is simpler: “I hate to have my picture taken!” she exclaims.
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Looking over Lacombe’s photographs, which reveal Streep in a compelling array of moods and stages, another observer might remark upon her enduring beauty, her chameleon-esque ability to transform herself, or the remarkable range of her roles. But what she herself sees is very different. “I can really see when I’m pregnant,” she muses. “You see the little squirrel cheeks and stuff. In the 1986 picture, I’m pregnant with Grace; my hands are on my face because I’m holding the squirrels in—holding them back!” Another hoot of laughter.
The 2002 portrait, which Lacombe took after Streep’s makeup had been scrubbed off at the end of a shoot, was so unadorned that Streep’s publicist was horrified to learn that the American Film Institute was using it on a Sunset Boulevard billboard to advertise its tribute to Streep. “But she loved it,” the publicist says.
“It’s my favorite one because they scraped all the crap off my face,” Streep says, snickering. “I’m looking at Brigitte after all these years—we confront each other through the lens, and she does get it: ‘Take the picture! Get it done so I can go home!’”
And now Streep is tired of talking about herself, so it’s time to sum up how she feels about this stage in her life. “I’m very fucking grateful to be alive,” she says fervently. “I have so many friends who are sick or gone, and I’m here. Are you kidding? No complaints!”
CHER
FOREVER CHER
By Krista Smith | December 2010
Malibu, a 21-mile stretch of oceanfront in Los Angeles County, is where many of the rich and profoundly famous members of the entertainment industry choose to live. Known as the Malibu Movie Colony in the 1920s, it has been home to everyone from Gloria Swanson to Barbra Streisand, from John McEnroe to Tom Hanks, from Britney Spears to Brad and Angelina. Locals invariably tell you that the house Bing Crosby paid around $2,500 for in the 1920s was bought by Robert Redford in 1982 for nearly $2 million. Now houses sell in the neighborhood of $45 million. Just off Pacific Coast Highway, I pull into the private driveway of one such house, a cross between a Venetian palazzo and a Moorish castle. Waiting for me inside is the most glittering Malibu resident of them all: Cher.
An assistant greets me and asks me to wait in the living room, which is suspended seemingly right over the crashing waves of the Pacific. In 2007, Cher sold all of her Gothic furnishings at auction and engaged Martyn Lawrence-Bullard to do a complete makeover. Describing their collaboration, Lawrence-Bullard says, “Cher loves all things that are Eastern—Moroccan, Syrian-inlaid furniture, Indonesian pieces, beautiful 17th- and 18th-century Chinese things. Everything has to feel very Zen, but it also has to have that bit of Cher pizzazz.” The ceiling of the living room is painted in a 16th-century Moroccan design and finished in gold leaf. After a few minutes, the assistant leads me up to the star’s bedroom. According to Lawrence-Bullard, the bed originally belonged to Natacha Rambova, who was the wife of Rudolph Valentino. “I bought it at an amazing Hollywood auction of all this incredible furniture that came from the MGM Studios.”
Cher admits that she can’t remember the last time she sat down for a lengthy interview. “What are we going to talk about for two hours?” she asks, sitting cross-legged on a sofa next to a wall of windows. “There’s no view like it in all of Malibu,” she says. “It’s one of the reasons I don’t sell this place. It’s so big for me, but it’s unbelievable.” Cher has two other properties, she says, “an apartment in town—for absolutely no reason—and a house in Hawaii. When I sold my house in Aspen, I thought my kids were going to disown me.” With no makeup, wearing jeans, a canary-yellow sweatshirt, and Day-Glo orange Nikes, she looks more like a teenager than the rock goddess who has sold some 100 million records. Although she has a well-known fondness for wigs, she is not wearing one today. Her hair, long and jet black, is parted in the center. She has just finished a voice lesson in order to get back into performance shape, after having taken a summer hiatus from her Las Vegas show, which began in 2008 at the Colosseum in Caesars Palace. Cher got a reported $60 million a year and a three-year contract for about 200 performances. The show will close in February.
At 64, she has been up and down too many times to count. “I feel like a bumper car. If I hit a wall, I’m backing up and going in another direction,” she says, adding, “And I’ve hit plenty of fucking walls in my career. But I’m not stopping. I think maybe that’s my best quality: I just don’t stop.”
Cher, who has been in show business for 46 years, has had a No. 1 record in each of the last five decades, from “I Got You Babe,” in 1965, to “Song for the Lonely,” in 2002. She has won an Oscar for best actress, in Moonstruck (1987); three Golden Globes for her performances in The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour (1973), Silkwood (1983), and Moonstruck; an Emmy for her 2003 Farewell Tour special; and a 2000 Grammy for best dance recording, “Believe.”
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This fall at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards, she stole the show in a sheer bodysuit similar to the one that got her banned from prime time 20 years ago on that same network. She was greeted with a standing ovation by the audience members, most of whom were still in diapers when her “If I Could Turn Back Time” video stretched the boundaries of what could be shown on-air. “So far tonight, I’m the oldest chick, with the biggest hair, and the littlest costume,” she announced before presenting Lady Gaga—wearing a meat dress—with the Video of the Year Award. A star-struck Gaga said, “I never thought I’d be asking Cher to hold my meat purse.” A week later, Cher was spoofing the exchange in the opening monologue at her Vegas show. “I thought Lady Gaga said to hold her mink purse—fuck, this is a steak! [Audience laughter.] I thought, I’ve seen weirder things than that in my life.” She wasn’t so much passing the torch as saying, Remember, bitches, I was the original diva.
“I know I’m not supposed to have any opinions about politics, because I’m famous,” says Cher. Yet the first half of our conversation, over tea served in commemorative mugs from her 2002 tour, is about little else. Cher supported Hillary Clinton in the last election, and although she accepts the fact that Barack Obama inherited insurmountable problems, she still thinks Hillary would have done a better job. A large portion of Cher’s charitable work is devoted to the veterans who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. “I was buying helmet inserts for guys who were in I
raq. Football players have more protection on their heads than the guys over there do.” One of her immediate goals is to join Obama’s Veterans Task Force.
“I would be willing to pay a lot more taxes, because I make a lot more money, but I don’t want to give them more to just fuck things up more,” she continues. “It really should fall on people like me to get together and do things to help the people in this country. If you’re not worrying about how to put food on your table, you [should be] worrying about why other people don’t have food on their table. I remember a great America where we made everything. There was a time when the only thing you got from Japan was a really bad cheap transistor radio that some aunt gave you for Christmas.”
Cher actively criticized the Bush administration, and she was known to call in to C-SPAN occasionally. “I got so obsessed with it that it was kind of interfering with my life. Sarah Palin came on, and I thought, Oh, fuck, this is the end. Because a dumb woman is a dumb woman.” She doesn’t stop there. On the subject of Arizona governor Jan Brewer, Cher says, “She was worse than Sarah Palin, if that is possible. This woman was like a deer in headlights. She’s got a handle on the services of the state, and I would not let her handle the remote control.”
However, she happens to have an appreciation for the conservative televangelist Joel Osteen. “He’s only got kind things to say, and he’s not crying or yelling or telling everybody how they’re going to be damned—and send money right away. I have a problem with religion that makes it so, like, ‘We are the ones. We are the chosen ones.’” I ask her if she’s religious, and she confesses, “I’m just the worst little Buddhist in town. I wish that I did the things that I really believe in, because when I do, my life goes much smoother. I can get pretty wrapped up in the dramatic hysteria.”
Cher has never exercised the benefit of spin; she prefers to be honest and direct. When Chastity, her daughter with the late Sonny Bono, came out as a lesbian, in 1995, Cher was angry with her at first, claiming that she felt as if she were the last to know. She admitted shortly afterward, however, that she had behaved in a very uncharacteristic way. Chastity has since gone through a gender reassignment and is now living as a man. Last May he legally changed his name to Chaz Bono. Cher says, “Well, she’s a very smart girl—boy! This is where I get into trouble. My pronouns are fucked. I still don’t remember to call her ‘him.’ She’s really cool about it—such an easygoing person. Because I’ve hardly called her Chastity since her brother was born.”
The brother is Elijah Blue Allman, 34 and an artist, Cher’s son with Gregg Allman, a founding member of the very successful Allman Brothers Band, whom she impulsively married in Vegas in 1975. They divorced several years later, owing to Allman’s heroin addiction. “You know, I loved him,” Cher admits, “but I didn’t really want Elijah around him alone. It’s hard finding a drug addict who is also going to be a father.”
She speaks touchingly and at length about her children, both of whom live in Los Angeles. “The moment Elijah gets in trouble, he runs to Chaz. He just hightails his ass right there. He’s doing art projects, he’s had two exhibits, and he’s actually sold everything. We’ll see what happens. They are both very talented, both very artistic, and they are good children. They’re grown-ups. They’re so different. Chaz had a dad for a long time. 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. Elijah didn’t really have Gregory. Gregory moved off someplace else. He was the nicest person, even when he was doing drugs. But when you’re doing drugs, the people you’re hanging with aren’t exactly. . . . You’re not going to church to find these people.”
Cher raised her children essentially as a single mother. “Elijah always called Chastity Da-Di-Da, so we shortened it to Da.” Recently, she says, “I said to Chaz, ‘I can’t not call you Da,’ and he said, ‘Mom, don’t be silly.’ One time, when Chaz was little, we were on a field trip, and she said, ‘I’m so pissed off, Mom. You can never not be Cher—we can never just do something.’” She concludes, “So your kids pay. I did the best I could do, and yet it was definitely lacking.” Does she think her kids bear any residual anger? “I think Chaz is pretty much finished with it, and I think Elijah has a little longer to go, but they both really love me a lot. But it’s hard.”
When we get on the topic of her children’s struggles with substance abuse—Chaz has been through rehab for pain medication, and Elijah for heroin—Cher doesn’t blink. “It’s weird, because both of my children had the same drug problems as their fathers—same drug of choice,” she says. “My father was a heroin addict, and my sister’s father was an alcoholic. But it jumped us. It jumped my mom, too, because my grandfather was an alcoholic. I didn’t not do drugs because of moral issues. I tried a couple of drugs, but I never felt good out of control. I have the constitution of a fruit fly. I can’t do coffee, but I can do Dr Pepper.”
Cher seems to have arrived at an appreciation—if not a full understanding—of Chaz’s choice: “If I woke up tomorrow in a guy’s body, I would just kick and scream and cry and fucking rob a bank, because I cannot see myself as anything but who I am—a girl. I would not take it as well as Chaz has. I couldn’t imagine it.”
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With Burlesque, which opens on Thanksgiving, Cher has her first lead role in a movie in a decade. Christina Aguilera, the 29-year-old pop star and songwriter, who has won four Grammys and sold 48 million records, makes her film debut opposite Cher. Burlesque is set in a nightclub in Los Angeles. Cher plays Tess, the proprietor; Stanley Tucci plays the stage manager; and Aguilera is a small-town aspiring dancer and singer. The poster says it all: IT TAKES A LEGEND TO MAKE A STAR.
Clint Culpepper, the president of Screen Gems, an arm of Sony Pictures, is responsible for getting Cher back into acting. Aguilera remembers, “I was the first person to sign on to the movie. When I heard that Cher was a possibility, I said, ‘Clint, go after her. Go get her!’” Cher confirms, “It was Clint. He got down on his knees and begged. We went to the office, and [the director] Steve Antin had such a vision, and Clint had a passion. David Geffen got involved, sending me e-mails from St. Tropez saying, ‘Sweetheart, you have to do this.’ I was getting barraged.”
Culpepper remembers describing Aguilera to Cher: “You don’t understand. She adores you. She only wants to make it with you. This is a chick that would drink your bathwater.” After Cher agreed to do the project, Culpepper persuaded Aguilera, who had just finished rehearsing on the Sony lot and had her baby son in her arms, to pay a surprise visit to Cher, who was on a nearby soundstage, rehearsing her Vegas show. “So we walk in, and Cher smiles and walks over to us. Christina says, ‘Hi. I’m the one that would drink your bathwater.’ And Cher says, ‘I’m going to say to you what Meryl Streep said to me on the set of Silkwood: “Welcome. I’m glad you’re here.”’ And she hugged her.”
I ask Aguilera, who was born in 1980 (the year her co-star turned 34), when she discovered Cher. “I noticed her for the first time when she was doing ‘If I Could Turn Back Time.’ She was in her sort of ass-less leather getup, and I think she was performing with a bunch of sailors. Maybe that was engraved in my brain and then inspired me later, for my own ass-less-chaps moment with my video ‘Dirty.’ I guess I remember that moment so well because I have such an appreciation for a strong woman, a woman who’s been there, done everything, before everyone else—who had the guts to do it.”
Stanley Tucci plays Cher’s counterpart and wingman, Sean. He too admits to falling under her spell. “She’s so charming, so funny, so smart, even though she always pretends she isn’t. You can’t help but fall in love a little bit. We were instantly comfortable with each other. I get star-struck. And I was star-struck. But within 10 minutes you’re calling each other filthy names, and you’re not star-struck anymore.”
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To underst
and Cher, you have to go back to Cherilyn Sarkisian La Piere. As David Geffen, her former lover and consigliere (and her current neighbor in Malibu), says, “She captured the Zeitgeist a very long time ago, and she never left. To do that is a miracle.”
Born in El Centro, California, Cher lived most of her childhood in the Valley, a district in Los Angeles approximately 30 minutes from Hollywood. She says she always wanted to be famous. Would she have felt the same way if she had been born in Kansas? “I would have gotten my ass out of there so quickly! Driving around on my tricycle at four, I shouted to everyone, ‘We’ve got to get out of here! We belong in town!’”
Her grandmother, who recently died at the age of 96, was 13 when she had Cher’s mother, Georgia Holt, a fair-haired, green-eyed beauty, who at 84 lives just down the road from Cher in Malibu, as does Cher’s half-sister, Georganne. Cher’s father fled when she was just a baby, and things became so difficult at one point that she spent time in a Catholic orphanage. “My mother told me once about how she got pregnant with me and didn’t want to be with my dad; she was just so young and inexperienced. My grandmother said, ‘You have a bright future.’ She actually suggested an abortion, so my mom was in the doctor’s office—a back-alley doctor—getting on the table. And then at the last minute she said, ‘I can’t do this. I don’t care what happens—I can’t do this.’”
They had a very bohemian lifestyle. Georgia Holt married eight times (three times to Cher’s biological father). “Our life was so chaotic, just one insane moment after another,” recalls Cher. “They were all artists and models and dancers. I remember, once, my mother saying, ‘You should have a stable future’ and blah, blah, blah. I said, ‘I don’t think I want a stable future if it’s going to be like our neighbors’. I don’t want to be like them.’”
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