Cher says ex-husband Sonny Bono ‘took all my money’ during rising success and marriage

Cher said her late ex-husband Sonny Bono ripped her off financially during their time together as she rose to fame in Hollywood.

“He took all my money,” Cher said in an interview with New York Times, which was released on Sunday, ahead of the debut of the first volume of her two-part book, “Cher: The Memoir.” “I just thought, we’re husband and wife. Half the things are his, half the things are mine. It didn’t occur to me that there was another way.”

Cher and Bono are best known as the pop duo and television variety team Sonny & Cher. But behind closed doors, Cher says Bono was like a “parent” who at one point took advantage of her financially. The two met when Cher was 16 and Bono was 27, a relationship she wouldn’t call a “#MeToo moment” because she “lied” to him about her age.

In an attempt to avoid living with her mother at the time, she roomed with Bono in exchange for cleaning and cooking. But a few years later they got married in 1964 and had children. And as the pair grew into their stardom, Cher says Sonny became emotionally abusive and developed a “my way or the highway” mentality, saying Bono set up their company so Cher was his employee.

“To this day,” Cher added, “I wish God could just ask, ‘Son, at what time, on what day, did you go, ‘Yeah, you know what? I’m going to take her money.'”

The couple divorced in 1975 and Bono died in a skiing accident in 1998.

“I woke up one morning – early, like 5 o’clock – and I just thought, I’m not going to do this anymore. I’m going to leave him,” Cher explained, adding that she told Bono she wanted to pursue an intimate relationship with the group’s guitarist, and eventually did. “I started making a plan that was so dangerous I don’t know how I had the courage to do it.”

It was only in the relationship with film producer David Geffen that she became financially oriented.

“I didn’t know how to check out. I didn’t have a bank account,” Cher said. Nevertheless, Cher went on to become a household name separate from the one she married into and carve her own path in the industry.

Her “Cher: The Memoir” is out Nov. 19 from HarperCollins.

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