Cher always thought her real name was Cherilyn. Then she found out it was Cheryl.
The end.
The story could be summed up that simply, but the 78-year-old singer, actor and icon of all things fabulous devoted a little more time to it in her recently released book, “Cher: The Memoir, Part One.”
“I believed Cherilyn was my name until the day years later when I decided to legally change my name to simply Cher,” E! Online reported.
It was then that the “Believe” singer discovered that mom Georgia Holt had inadvertently put “Cheryl” on the birth certificate. Holt had planned to combine Cheryl — inspired by the name of Lana Turner’s daughter — with her own mother’s name, Lynda. Cherilyn.
In response to what Cher said was her shock, her mom had a fitting response: “Give me a break.”
As Page Six outlines, Holt told her daughter, “I was only a teenager, and I was in a lot of pain.”
Plus, big deal. Cher’s new memoir, fortunately, gets juicier. She delves into her relationships with Sonny Bono and Gregg Allman. As Page Six notes, she names Val Kilmer as the only man who ever dumped her.
Here is a trio of other little-known but much more interesting Cher facts:
- Cher’s early childhood was tough. Her father abandoned the family not long after she was born, and she was briefly placed in a home for children and unwed mothers, according to The Times’ review of the memoir.
- Cher tells in the memoir how, as a 15-year-old, she made out with actor Warren Beatty, 25, in his swimming pool. She had borrowed Natalie Wood’s bathing suit. Wood was Beatty’s paramour at the time and co-star in “Splendor in the Grass.”
- Another tidbit she revealed to “Today”: She once turned to comedy legend Lucille Ball for relationship advice. “I told her, ‘Lucy, I want to leave Sonny and you’re the only one I know that’s ever been in this same situation. What should I do?’” Ball, in colorful language, advised that she exit the marriage.