50 free Cher trivia questions with answers. Snap out of it. This quiz covers six decades of Cher: the girl from El Centro who sang for Phil Spector as Bonnie Jo Mason, the duo with Sonny Bono, the Comedy Hour and the navel the censors tried to hide, the 1970s No. 1s, the marriage to Gregg Allman, the Broadway detour that led to Silkwood, Mask and the Oscar for Moonstruck, the battleship video, the Auto-Tune of Believe, the farewell tour that lasted three years, the ABBA album, the Christmas record and the 2024 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. Fifty questions on the songs, films, marriages, records and reinventions. The easy questions ask which film won her the Academy Award and which 1998 single popularised Auto-Tune; the hard ones want the name she used on her first single, the duo's earlier alias, the ship in the If I Could Turn Back Time video, the fee for her Caesars Palace residency and how many decades she has scored a Billboard No. 1 in. It suits fans of every era and anyone who has ever wondered whether she really can turn back time. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Cher, her records and films, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What was Cher's birth name?
Cheryl Sarkisian
She was born in El Centro, California, on May 20, 1946, and later adopted as Cheryl LaPiere.
Q 02Cher's father was of which ancestry, her paternal grandparents having survived a genocide?
Armenian
Her mother Georgia Holt was of Irish, English, German and Native American descent.
Q 03Under what name did Cher release her first single, 'Ringo, I Love You', in 1964?
Bonnie Jo Mason
Radio programmers mistook her low voice for a man's and thought a gay man was singing to Ringo Starr.
Q 04Which record producer was Sonny Bono working for when he met Cher in 1962?
Phil Spector
Sonny was 11 years older than her.
Q 05Before they were Sonny & Cher, the duo recorded under what alias?
Caesar & Cleo
Reprise once released singles under both names at the same time without realising they were the same act.
Q 06Which 1965 Sonny & Cher hit became emblematic of 1960s counterculture?
I Got You Babe
It later got a second life playing every morning in Groundhog Day.
Q 07Which moody 1966 song was Cher's first million-selling solo single?
Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)
It reached No. 1 in Italy, No. 2 in the US and No. 3 in the UK.
Q 08Which of these was NOT one of Cher's three US Billboard No. 1 singles of the 1970s?
The Way of Love
The Way of Love was a hit but stalled outside the top spot.
Q 09Cher's 'Half-Breed' is sung by the daughter of a white father and a mother of which nation?
Cherokee
Lyricist Mary Dean wrote it specifically for Cher.
Q 10How much did Sonny and Cher spend, mortgaging their home, on the 1969 film Chastity?
$500,000
It flopped, and the couple named their first child after it.
Q 11On which network did The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour air, drawing more than 30 million viewers a week?
CBS
It premiered as a summer replacement in August 1971 and ran for three years.
Q 12On her solo 1970s TV show, Cher fought the censors to become the first woman to do what on US television?
Deliberately expose her navel
Bob Mackie designed the outfits that made it possible.
Q 13Which designer created Cher's trend-setting outfits on the Comedy Hour and beyond?
Bob Mackie
Her sketch character Laverne LaShinsky was a brash housewife who let her practise comedy.
Q 21For which 1985 film did Cher win the Best Actress award at Cannes?
Mask
She played Rusty Dennis, a biker raising a son with a disfiguring condition.
Q 22Cher won the Academy Award for Best Actress for which film?
Moonstruck
She plays an Italian widow who falls for her fiancé's younger brother, played by Nicolas Cage.
Q 23Who plays the younger brother Cher's character falls for in her Oscar-winning film?
Nicolas Cage
Norman Jewison directed; Billboard later ranked it the best acting performance by a musician in a movie.
Q 14Cher and Sonny split in late 1972 but stayed legally married for how much longer to protect their careers?
Two years
'The public still thinks we are married,' Sonny wrote in his diary; the divorce was final on June 26, 1975.
Q 15Whom did Cher marry on June 30, 1975, four days after her divorce from Sonny was finalised?
Gregg Allman
Their son Elijah Blue Allman was born the following July.
Q 16The 1976 reunion series The Sonny and Cher Show broke new ground on television how?
It starred a divorced couple
Their onscreen digs about the divorce helped sink it by August 1977.
Q 17Under what joint name did Cher and her second husband release the 1977 duet album Two the Hard Way?
Allman and Woman
Fights broke out between her fans and Allman Brothers fans, and she cancelled the tour.
Q 18How much per week was Cher earning from her early-1980s Caesars Palace residency?
$300,000
She was fronting the rock band Black Rose at the same time.
Q 19Cher made her Broadway debut in 1982 in which Robert Altman production, later filmed?
Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
She had moved to New York to study with Lee Strasberg but was cast before enrolling.
Q 20Cher earned her first Oscar nomination as Dolly Pelliker, the title character's roommate, in which 1983 film?
Silkwood
Mike Nichols cast her after seeing her onstage in Jimmy Dean; Meryl Streep played the lead.
Q 24Who plays the wealthy visitor who seduces Cher, Pfeiffer and Sarandon in The Witches of Eastwick?
Jack Nicholson
George Miller of Mad Max fame directed the comedy horror.
Q 25Cher's If I Could Turn Back Time video, notorious for its outfit, was shot on which battleship?
USS Missouri
The single spent seven weeks at No. 1 in Australia.
Q 26Which style did Cher adopt on Cher (1987), Heart of Stone (1989) and Love Hurts (1991)?
Hair metal
They produced hits including If I Could Turn Back Time and The Shoop Shoop Song.
Q 27Cher's US top-ten duet 'After All' was sung with which former Chicago frontman?
Peter Cetera
Just Like Jesse James was another top-ten single from the same album.
Q 28What was Cher's directorial debut?
If These Walls Could Talk, in 1996
It was an HBO anthology film about abortion across three decades.
Q 29How did Sonny Bono die in 1998?
A skiing accident
Cher's tearful eulogy called him 'the most unforgettable character' she had met.
Q 30Cher's 1998 hit Believe introduced the 'Cher effect'. What is it?
A stylised use of Auto-Tune to distort vocals
She was 52 at the time, and the song became 1999's No. 1 song in the US.