Cher is 74 years a superstar today. Three movie roles:
As Sissy in Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. D: Robert Altman (1982). A trashy melodrama shot on a shoestring after it flopped on Broadway gave Cher her first halfway decent role, solidifying the hard-living angel persona that she’d already developed in many of her hit records. Though new to film she held her own with Sandy Dennis, Karen Black and Kathy Bates (she’s like the brick wall that Dennis keeps bouncing off). Didn’t hurt that Altman’s direction turned fake art into the real thing.
Loretta in Moonstruck. D: Norman Jewison (1987). She won an Oscar for this and more than deserved it, anchoring the screwball lunacy of John Patrick Shanley’s script (for a while Shanley bid fair to become a Bronx version of Preston Sturges) while giving into it as well. Listen to her gaga “wolf” speech to Nicolas Cage or her perfect synopsis of La Boheme “I mean, she was coughing her brains out and still she had to keep singing!”
Elsa Morganthal Strauss-Armistan in Tea With Mussolini. D: Franco Zefferelli (1999). As an art-hungry Jewish American socialite living abroad in Florence during Mussolini’s rise ( and with a romantic past as tangled as her name) she’s the glamour in the life of the young man who will grow up to be the director. In her most aristocratic role she still holds traces of American brashness which gives her a frenemy chemistry with Maggie Smith. To each other they represent the worst image of their respected nations.