Cher has been an open book on her press run to promote Cher: The Memoir, and her latest unfiltered thoughts include slamming the late Mask director Peter Bogdanovich.
In an interview with The Times published Friday, Cher told the newspaper that Bogdanovich, who died at age 82 in 2022, “was an a--hole” when they worked together on the 1985 drama film Mask. Bogdanovich died from complications of Parkinson’s disease.
In Mask, her first leading role, Cher plays the mother of a charismatic teenager with a facial deformity. She won a Best Actress Award for her performance at Cannes.
“He was not nice to the girls in the film and he was so f---ing arrogant,” Cher also told the paper, “I really, really disliked him.” The feeling appeared to be mutual on Bogdanovich’s part before his death, as he named Cher as “most difficult actor” he’d ever worked with in a 2019 interview with Vulture. “She didn’t trust anybody, especially men,” he told the site, adding that “She can’t act,” and only won the Cannes award “because I shot her very well.”
Cher told The Times the director “was a pig,” who told her that she was “a nobody” on set. She described that incident in the interview. “[Bogdanovich] comes in and says, ‘Cher, where do you think we should film this scene?’ And I say, well, the kitchen is working pretty well, why don’t we do that again?”
The seemingly innocent encounter took a turn the following day, Cher described: “The next morning he arrives on set, eating an egg sandwich, and starts screaming that he’s not going to let me direct this film,” she said he told her, “I’m a nobody—he can cut me out at any moment.”
Cher said that she’s “really easy to work with,” especially when it’s “really great directors whom I respect” like “Bob Altman, Mike Nichols, Norman Jewison,” she explained. “I know when to listen.”
