She Couldn’t Read Well in School—Then She Became Simply Cher
She couldn’t read well enough to graduate high school. Her birth certificate had the wrong name. At 16, she dropped out and moved to LA with $50—and became the only artist with a #1 hit in seven consecutive decades.
Cherilyn Sarkisian was born on May 20, 1946, in El Centro, California, to a 19-year-old mother who’d just endured a long, painful labor. When the nurse demanded a name for the birth certificate, Georgia Holt—exhausted and overwhelmed—said the first thing that came to mind: “Well, Lana Turner’s my favorite actress and her little girl’s called Cheryl. My mother’s name is Lynda, so how about Cherilyn?”
The nurse wrote down “Cheryl.”
For the next 33 years, Cher believed her legal name was Cherilyn Sarkisian. She wouldn’t discover the truth until 1979, when she applied for a birth certificate to legally change her name to just “Cher.”
“I was shocked to discover that I was officially registered as Cheryl,” Cher later wrote. When she asked her mother about it, Georgia responded: “I was only a teenager, and I was in a lot of pain. Give me a break.”
But the confusion over her name was the least of Cher’s problems.
When Cher was 10 months old, her father—an Armenian-American truck driver with drug and gambling problems—divorced her mother and disappeared. Before leaving, he placed baby Cher in a Catholic orphanage because he couldn’t afford to care for her. Georgia was allowed to visit once a week, but only through a window. Both would later describe the experience as traumatic.
Cher’s childhood was defined by instability. Her mother remarried multiple times, and the family moved constantly—New York, Texas, California—wherever Georgia could find work. They were poor. Cher remembered using rubber bands to hold her shoes together.
But poverty wasn’t Cher’s only obstacle.
In school, Cher struggled. She enjoyed her English and drama classes, but her grades were terrible. She couldn’t keep up with reading assignments. She felt stupid, even though she knew she wasn’t.
In fifth grade, Cher organized a class performance of the musical Oklahoma! When the boys refused to participate, she took on the male roles herself. At age nine, her voice was already unusually deep for a girl—a voice that would later become her signature.
Cher idolized Audrey Hepburn, especially her role in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. She studied how Hepburn moved, how she spoke, how she commanded attention on screen. Cher wanted that. She wanted to be seen, to be somebody, to escape the cycle of poverty and chaos that defined her childhood.
But school kept getting harder.
Cher wouldn’t be diagnosed with severe dyslexia until she was 30 years old. But at 16, all she knew was that she couldn’t do what other students could do. Reading was exhausting. Assignments felt impossible. And the system had no idea how to help her.
So in 1962, at age 16, Cher made a decision that would change her life: she dropped out of high school and moved to Los Angeles with a friend.
She had almost no money. No high school diploma. No connections. And a learning disability that would follow her for the rest of her life.
What she did have was ambition.
Cher enrolled in acting classes and started working as a dancer in small clubs along Hollywood’s Sunset Strip. She introduced herself to performers, managers, agents—anyone who might give her a shot. She wasn’t shy about asking for what she wanted. She couldn’t afford to be.
And then, in November 1962, Cher walked into a coffee shop and met a man named Sonny Bono.
Sonny was 27—eleven years older than Cher. He worked for legendary record producer Phil Spector, and he had connections in the music industry. Cher wasn’t immediately attracted to him, but she was impressed by his hair, which she described as “something in between Caesar and Napoleon.”
When Cher’s roommate moved out and she couldn’t afford rent, Sonny offered her a job as his housekeeper. She moved in. It wasn’t romantic at first—it was survival.
But Sonny saw something in Cher. He introduced her to Phil Spector, who hired her as a backing vocalist. Suddenly, the 16-year-old high school dropout was singing backup on some of the biggest records of the 1960s: the Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'” and the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby.”
In early 1964, Spector produced Cher’s first solo single, “Ringo, I Love You,” released under the name Bonnie Jo Mason. Many radio programmers rejected it—they thought Cher’s deep contralto voice belonged to a gay man singing about the Beatles drummer.
The single flopped.
But Cher and Sonny didn’t give up. They formed a duo and started calling themselves Caesar and Cleo, then later Sonny & Cher. They recorded a song called “I Got You Babe.”
American audiences didn’t get it. The couple’s flower-power outfits and unconventional style felt too weird, too countercultural. So they took the Rolling Stones’ advice and went to England, where audiences embraced them.
“I Got You Babe” hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1965.
Cher—the girl who couldn’t read well enough to finish high school—was suddenly a star.
But Cher wanted more than to be half of a duo. She launched a solo career, releasing “All I Really Want to Do,” which hit #15 on the charts. When the Byrds released their own version and the two songs started competing, the Byrds backed down. Roger McGuinn later said: “We loved the Cher version… We didn’t want to hassle. So we just turned our record over.”
By the early 1970s, Sonny and Cher’s popularity was fading. But they got a second chance with “The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour,” a summer replacement TV show that became a hit.
And Cher finally had her solo breakthrough: three consecutive #1 hits between 1971 and 1973—”Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves,” “Half-Breed,” and “Dark Lady.”
But Cher’s marriage to Sonny was falling apart. She later revealed that their relationship had been controlling and, at times, abusive. They divorced in 1975.
Cher remarried quickly—to rocker Gregg Allman—but that marriage lasted only four years. By 1979, Cher had accumulated four surnames: Sarkisian, LaPiere (from her stepfather who adopted her), Bono, and Allman.
She legally changed her name to just “Cher.” No surname. Just Cher.
And then Cher did something almost no one expected: she became a serious actress.
She starred in Silkwood (1983), earning critical acclaim. Then came Mask (1985), for which she won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress. And in 1988, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Moonstruck.
Cher became one of only a handful of people—alongside Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra, and Jamie Foxx—to win an Oscar and have a #1 hit on the Billboard charts.
But Cher wasn’t done reinventing herself.
In 1998, at age 52, she released “Believe”—a dance-pop song with Auto-Tune effects that became a global phenomenon. It hit #1 in 23 countries and became the best-selling single by a female artist in UK history.
With “Believe,” Cher achieved something no other solo artist has ever done: she had a #1 hit in seven consecutive decades (1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, and counting).
The girl who couldn’t read well enough to graduate high school became one of the most successful entertainers in history.
The teenager whose birth certificate had the wrong name became so iconic she only needed one.
The 16-year-old dropout who moved to LA with almost nothing became a Grammy winner, an Oscar winner, and a Kennedy Center honoree.
Here’s what I can’t stop thinking about:
Cher succeeded despite every system telling her she couldn’t. Despite poverty. Despite dyslexia. Despite being told she was too weird, too unconventional, too old, too female.
She reinvented herself decade after decade—from folk-pop singer to variety show host to rock musician to Oscar-winning actress to dance-pop icon.
And she did it all on her terms.
Cher. Born 1946. The high school dropout who couldn’t read—who became the only artist with #1 hits in seven consecutive decades and proved that limitations are just invitations to find another way.
