After years of performing in clubs and auditoriums, Sonny and Cher finally got the opportunity to host their own summer variety show, "The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour" (CBS, 1971-74), which did so well that it returned the following season to become a hit regular series. The couple's soft rock sound, daring psychedelic wardrobe (including Cher's famously extravagant hairstyles, headdresses and wigs), irreverent delivery and natural rapport with the audience aptly captured the mood of the times. After they divorced, she hosted her own series, the so-so "Cher" (CBS, 1975-76), and then reunited professionally with her ex-husband for "The Sonny and Cher Show" (CBS, 1976-77). Her put-downs of Sonny, which had seemed funny when the two were man and wife, however, just didn't work as well as before, and the series limped along for a season and a half before its cancellation. Thereafter, Cher turned up in innumerable variety and interview specials.

Sonny and Cher appeared as themselves in the groovy feature films "Wild on the Beach" (1965) and "Good Times" (1967), after which Cher made her acting debut in the coming of age film scripted by Bono, "Chastity" (1969, also the name of their daughter). She made her stage debut in the Robert Altman-directed "Come Back to the Five & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean" (1981) and reprised her role for his 1982 film version. No one really took her seriously as an actress, though, until Mike Nichols' "Silkwood" (1983), in which she played Meryl Streep's blue-collar lesbian friend and received an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress. Finally, Cher had earned serious acclaim for her acting, displaying an intensity and control alongside the good-humored flamboyance which had helped make her famous. Despite her battles with director Peter Bogdanovich, she continued her growth as the biker mother of a horribly disfigured child in "Mask" (1985), winning the Best Actress Award at Cannes for her efforts and establishing herself as an A-list Hollywood actor.

Her increased stature brought Cher starring roles in three 1987 features, "The Witches of Eastwick", "Suspect" and "Moonstruck". She delivered a charming performance as sensual sculptress Alexandra Medford, one of three man-hungry women, in "Witches", although the film may have been unevenly weighted in Jack Nicholson's favor. Cher turned in a fine and utterly believable performance as a dedicated public defender battling a near hopeless case in "Suspect", but she was saving the best for last, a tour de force performance as a revitalized Italian woman in "Moonstruck", for which she won that years' Best Actress Academy Award. She then disappeared from the screen (but hardly out of the headlines) until 1990 when she appeared as a loopy romantic mother in "Mermaids", her last film for six years, with the exception of cameos as herself in Robert Altman's "The Player" (1992) and "Ready-to-Wear (Pret-a-Porter)" (1994).

After several years selling hair products and sugar substitute on TV, starting her own mail order home decor business and undergoing numerous plastic surgeries, Cher returned to the screen as a wealthy wife whose husband wants to kill her in the unsatisfying dark comedy "Faithless" --------That same year, she also released her first recording in five years, "It's a Man's World", and made her directing debut with a segment of the HBO anthology movie about abortion, "If These Walls Could Talk". 1998 saw her executive produce and host "Sonny and Me: Cher Remembers", a CBS special featuring footage from their old CBS comedy-variety shows and tributes to her late former husband. She also had another project in the works as executive producer, not to mention acting in a Franco Zeffirelli movie ("Tea With Mussolini" lensing 1998), giving every indication that this phoenix was on the rise again. She has a broad-based appeal, particularly among working-class women who have a deep empathy with her emotional life.