Chers dating history: from Alexander Edwards to Tom Cruise
Reflecting on Cher’s greatest romances
While many people have raised their eyebrows at Cher's latest, much younger boyfriend, 37-year-old producer Alexander Edwards, this isn’t the first time that the ‘Believe’ singer’s relationship history has piqued public interest.
From a brief tryst with Warren Beatty to marrying Sonny Bono, few stars have had as tumultuous a love life as Cher.
HELLO! looks back at some of the Oscar-winning actress and singer’s greatest romances.
Alexander Edwards
Cher, 77, is currently dating music executive Alexander Edwards who is 37 years old. Despite the 40 years between them, Cher said that they get along great. “He's fabulous. And I don't give men qualities that they don't deserve” she said on the Kelly Clarkson Show.
Even though they get on great, Cher acknowledged that their age gap is noticeable. "Sometimes I’m talking to him and he has no idea who I’m talking about … The other day, I said, ‘Do you know who, I don’t know, Clark Gable, [is]?’ Somebody said, ‘Yes, of course,’ but most of my references … He’ll look at me and go, ‘I wasn’t born yet,'"
That doesn’t mean they have nothing in common though. "We can talk music. We can talk about everything. He's got a great sense of humor, he’s got the cutest son in the world, ever … We just get each other." Alexander shares a son, Slash Electric, 4, with ex-girlfriend Amber Rose, who is 40 years old.
Warren Beatty
When Cher was only 16 years old, she had a brief romance with 25-year-old movie star Warren Beatty, but the couple met in an unusual way.
When she first got her driving license, the star used to drive down Sunset Boulevard in her stepfather Gilbert’s Skylark. It was when she was passing the Strip’s famous celebrity hangout, Schwab’s Pharmacy, that she told Elle that she was nearly run down by a man in a white Lincoln convertible.
“Are you nuts?” she said to the driver, shaken by the near-accident. Suddenly, she recognized the man who had almost wrecked her stepfather’s car. “I looked at his face, and I thought, my god, it's Warren Beatty."
“But you can’t call it a relationship,” Cher said. “It was very Warren”, potentially referring to the actor’s reputation as a lothario linked to hundreds of other women, from Joan Collins to Diane Keaton to Julie Christie to Madonna.
Sonny Bono
Not long after her relationship with Warren Beatty, Cher met her first husband, Sonny Bono. The two would find fame as singing duo Sonny & Cher in the 1960s and 70s with hits like “I Got You Babe” and an eponymous TV show.
The couple had one child, a son Chaz Bono, born in 1969 shortly before the couple married; the couple had previously claimed they were already married when they first became famous around 1965.
Sonny and Cher separated in 1972, but remained married until 1974.
David Geffen
Cher fell in love with music mogul David Geffen in the 1970s, which he described as "the greatest high I had ever experienced."
The duo spent 18 months together until she left him for rocker Gregg Allman. By 1992, David came out as gay.
Cher, one of the most enduring gay icons ever, said of the relationship: “I was the first person to share his bed and to share his life,” speaking to Tom King for a book about Geffen, The Operator. “People don’t believe that, or they don’t want to believe it, or they don’t understand how it could be. But we were really crazy about each other.”
Elvis Presley
There was a period of time in the mid-1970s where Cher almost went on a date with the King of Rock n Roll.
However, she backed out: "Almost, I got nervous, I didn't get there [to the date], I was that nervous. I wish I had."
Gregg Allman
Cher married again in 1975, when she was in a highly publicized relationship with The Allman Brothers Band’s Gregg Allman. Together they had a son, Elijah Blue Allman, born in 1976.
The couple worked on a collaborative album titled ‘Two the Hard Way’, which was a massive failure on release. When the couple went on tour in Europe to support their albums, fights would often break out in the venues between Allman Brothers fans and Cher fans, so Cher canceled the tour and the couple eventually divorced in 1978.
Gene Simmons
Not long after her divorce, Cher began a two-year relationship with Gene Simmons from rock band Kiss. Gene has called Cher his first love.
At the time, Kiss famously sported face paint during public appearances and had yet to reveal their bare faces to the world. When the couple appeared together, often the Kiss musician’s face was half-covered.
While dating Cher, however, Gene fell in love with Diana Ross and would later move in with the ‘Upside Down’ singer.
Val Kilmer
By the 1980s, Cher was known for her controversial lifestyle of tattoos, plastic surgery, exhibitionist fashion sense and relationships with younger men like Val Kilmer. 13 years her junior, Val and Cher met at a birthday party and the Moonstruck star said: “We became friends because we laughed at the same things constantly.”
The duo bonded over “our sense of humor, and what we would put up with from one another, was more than I think I've ever had with any other guy.
“He would just go off and do his own thing and you just had to be prepared. And he was so beautiful. It went from madly in love and laughing hysterically to respecting each other's ability,” she said to People.
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Tom Cruise
The ‘Mission Impossible’ actor is in Cher’s “top five lovers”, she revealed in an interview with Andy Cohen. After first meeting at Madonna’s 1985 wedding to Sean Penn, Tom and Cher reconnected at The White House.
"Then a bunch of people who were dyslexic were invited to the White House, and Tom and I are both dyslexic," Cher told the Daily Mail. "We didn't go out till way later, but there definitely was a connection there."
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