How good is the new Mamma Mia?
The first review inside:
GLAM’S the name of the game as Lily James poses with co-star Amanda Seyfried at the world premiere of Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again.
Downton star Lily, 29, plays a young version of Meryl Streep’s Donna in the ABBA musical sequel.
And Oscar-winner Meryl, 69, was joined at the Hammersmith Apollo, West London, last night by Cher – who plays the new role of her mum, Ruby.
The singer, 72, revealed she and pal Meryl joked about her being her screen mum, saying: “We had a good laugh. She still thinks it’s hysterical.”
When you have failure, you want to explore it. It makes you better CHER ON HOW YOU LEARN FROM THE BAD TIMES
easier to get along with than the other,” Cher recalls of her own childhood. “But I got along with both of them and in this movie I’m not so welcome. I have to earn my way back into this because I wasn’t such a great role model.”
In real life though, Cher has won an army of fans. She burst on to the music scene with hubby Sonny Bono and their song I Got You Babe reached number one in the US and UK in 1965. Over the next decade, they sold 40 million records.
“I guess my first big breakthrough came because my mother was so encouraging,” Cher recalls. “I wanted to be an entertainer from four. I went to see Cinderella and I wanted to be what I am today.
“I was dyslexic, I didn’t do well in school and there was nothing that was screaming, ‘Oh, you’re going to be Cher’, even though I always was. And my mother said, ‘It doesn’t make any difference, you’re smart, you’ll get people to do all that stuff when you grow up and you won’t have to do it, and yes, that’s what you’re going to be’.”
Cher won a Best Actress Oscar for 1987 film Moonstruck. Her next role will be in the film Artist in Residence, playing an eccentric tenant in a New York building.
And eccentric is probably a word she is used to. “My life is complicated,” she says with a laugh. “I didn’t know I was 40 until I was 60 and now I keep thinking, ‘I’m too old, why am I working so much and why do people want me to work so much?’. It’s crazy. I wish my life was simpler.”
Then there are those outfits – like the one in the video for If I Could Turn Back Time in 1989. How does she look so good?
“I’ve always been a healthy eater and my mother was too. We didn’t have a lot of money and didn’t eat meat because we couldn’t afford it,” she recalls. “And I try and take care of my skin because I know that’s the first thing that tells how old you are.”
Cher has been married twice, to musician Gregg Allman after Sonny. “I had a boyfriend not long ago,” she admits. But she says having a relationship in the public eye “only leads to tears,” adding: “It’s never really worked out and I’ve had break-ups.”
Her relationships with her kids have not been straightforward either. She has son Elijah Blue, 42, and transgender son Chaz Bono, 49. Cher and Elijah fell out after she reportedly refused to congratulate him on his engagement. They have since patched things up with Cher saying her two kids are “absolutely the best thing in the world”.
Recently, Cher has been vocal about the #MeToo movement and she and Meryl once saved a girl from a sexual attack in New York. The star also had her own casting couch incident years ago.
She says: “I was about 28. I wanted to do a movie and the producer called me to his house to do an interview. When I got there, several things happened and I realised what was going on. I said, ‘I’m feeling really sick and I have to go, I can’t continue the meeting, I just feel sick to my stomach’.
“And I left. But it was so obvious and he was so obvious. He was very famous.”
After enjoying such a successful career, does she have any regrets? “We don’t have enough time,” she chuckles. “Yeah, there are some. I think failure is necessary and underrated because when you are having a success you never go, ‘Why am I having this?’. “But when you’ve had a failure, you think about it, you ruminate and want to explore it. And I think it makes you be better.”