Cher and Makeup

Moonstruck is known for its famous, delicious makeover scene; but there are many makeovers across all of her movies.

There is rock-star primping happening in the opening credits of Good Times, a fashion makeover by Diana Midnight in Chastity and in Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean there is a makeover referenced offscreen, the drag makeover that gets Joe beaten up.

Cher’s character Dolly Pelliker gets made over by her mortician lover (named Angela) in Silkwood.

 

Rusty gives herself a makeover for her parents in Mask. 

And the witches get a kind of magical makeover from sex and living like libertines in movie The Witches of Eastwick.

Cher is also known as a celebrity who has often been willing to be seen out in public without makeup (unlike Dolly Parton).

She even did this on a 1978 television special where she admitted (without makeup) all her insecurities. Forget about the West Side Story tour de force on that same show, this was the brave-as-hell part.

Cher all made up:

The 1960s

From 16 Magazine:

Dear Cher, When I look at a picture of you, I just flip. You look so beautiful—your eyes are sparkling and your hair is long and shining. Then I look into the mirror and I just hate myself. Please, please tell me how I can get to look like you! Miserable

[Edited for parts about makeup.]

Dear Miserable, I am glad you like the way I look, believe me—but in doing so you are overlooking a most important fact. I am me and you are you! I am quite sure you are just as pretty (if not prettier) than I am, in your own way. So forget about me and let’s concentrate on you…and perhaps wear a little make-up. A thin eye-liner line on your upper lid and a little mascara may just do the trick. Give it a try. 

The 1970s

In Sonny & Cher, A Family Again (1977), Cher visits a New York City department store for cosmetics her dermatologist recommends.

Backstage, Cher does her own makeup (around the time a neglected young Tatum O’Neal was angling for a new mother-figure).

The magazine shows the difference between the 1960s and 1970s Cher look. Cher says she only focused on her eyes in the 1960s (like all the beauty books still say to…accent one face area only), but in the 1970s she went for it, focusing on both the eyes and the mouth.

In Cher Superstar(1975) Cher talks very about foundation, contouring and highlighting and doing your eyelashes.

I found this from my scrapbook,  “The Other Man In Cher’s Life” (date and magazine unknown, first CBS show era with Sonny). In it Daniel Eastman, “the world-famous beauty expert,” says “Cher has always been good with makeup. It’s kind of second nature for her. She’s very inventive and creative.”

He talks over contouring  her face but in no detail. “Cher has very good bone structure and coloring because of her Indian and Armenian heritage. Eastman considers “the lighting and the costume she will wear.”  He uses “a glowy lip gloss. First he follows the natural outline of her mouth with a lip brush. Then he fills in. Cher looks great in almost any color.”

“He has arched Cher’s eyebrows to perfection” [with electrolysis]. For eye makeup “he uses a creamy brown on the lids for depth. Under the brow he uses a lighter beige tone, The look is set off by a soft pair of Butterfly eyelashes.

Eastman’s salon is located in The Beverly Hills Health Club for Women.

Cher has plenty of practice doing her own makeup as “she has to change makeup two or three times a day depending on the scene she’s doing and the kind of clothes she’s going to wear. Long hours and bright lights are hard on her skin.” And also the “coping” with “tension.”

He recommends having makeup brushes in different sizes for eyes, lips and finishing powder (if used). He says never use facial tissue on your face. “It has wood pulp in it that scratches the skin. Cotton should be used instead.” Sponges are best for foundation but “there’s nothing like clean hands for blending makeup into the skin.”

“Makeup should be always be removed with a good cleaning cream suitable for each person’s skin type.”

The special look of all-out glamour, Cher (date unknown)

Cher says, “while I’m shooting, I wear a lot, but when I’m at home, I  go almost without anything…the most important things for me [at home] are the blusher and lipstick.”

Do you feel that you are your own beauty expert? “Yes. I definitely do. I do my make-up myself and I always have.”

The Cher Makeup Center (1977)

You could also work on your makeup artist techniques with this toy which includes some fake eyelashes and a case of makeup.

The 1980s

In the book Megastars by Richard Bernstein (1984) there are a few paragraphs about Cher that describe her style change from the 1970s to 1980s (a bit dismissively).

“Today, Cher’s famous claws for nails are clipped. So is the windfall of flossy hair. But in the beginning, there was Cher with the pure silken-like curtain of hair that fell below her waist. Her nails were like like a falcon’s talons, a mighty two inches long and dipped in sanguine crayon. Cher’s eyelashes still flap like porch awnings about her perfectly shaped almond eyes.”

The 1990s

Tips fromForever Fit (1991)

It’s interesting to me that there are no makeup tips in the book. None. Zero. And Cher has, since the time of press for Burlesque, talked about her love as a child of watching her mother and her mother’s friends putting on makeup. In the memoir we find out she’s been doing her own makeup for much of her career and was as obsessed about makeup as makeup artist and friend Kevyn Aucoin, according to him. So that would be a topic she would be an expert in.

The Saving Face DVD (1992)

Because I could not commit to joining the skin care club, I nabbed my copy of this video on eBay years later. In the beginning of the video, we learn that the more we depend on Aquasentials skin-care line, the less we will need to depend on makeup.

The set is pretty bare with some white vases. At one point, Cher and makeup artist Leonard Engleman look like they’re sitting in his living room, complete with fireplace and flowered wallpaper, wallpaper you’d imagine Cher would die before using in her own space.

The video begins with how to use the Aquasential products.

Cher and Engleman anticipate having a fall line of makeup coming in the fall, eye shadows, colors, lipsticks (but sadly this never materialized). But the “Saving Face” video is here to teach you how to use makeup products, ostensibly using their own new makeup.

The makeup demo chances scenery and now we’re in some kind of sterile room with random stones on end tables, stone vases and  white sheets hanging around.

But all that said, I love this beauty class and the lecture aspect of this video. It makes me feel like I’m part of a secret beauty society.  I fall quickly under the spell of the low gritty carnival aspect and the high-brow intellectualism of the beauty professor, Engleman is passing to me his beauty expertise.

Engleman spends about an hour doing makeup on two Beverly Hills-type ladies both somewhat middle-aged who sit there very placidly. For the makeup session, he’s wearing glasses. This segment, unfortunately, could be slow. And I think this brings us to one of the critical flaws of the Aquasentials product line: its pitchman. Although clearly an expert, Eastman is not all that exciting. He takes his time. And Mr. Cher Scholar confused him with Larry David while walking by.

Eastman is constantly talking about fixing imperfections. And considering these models are drop-dead gorgeous, imperfections are hard to come by. But even models such as these have disfigurements that must be hidden I guess, such as deep-set eyes or uneven lips or “chin fullness.” I could almost see the first model slightly flinch when Leonard remarked on her chin fullness. She was probably thinking, “Did Leonard just call my chin fat?’”

Some tips I gleaned from the makeover demonstration:

Engleman’s turn of phrase is “a little touch of color to the beauty that’s already there.” He’s been in the business for 28 years. I notice he uses sable brushes.

1. Cream Foundation: He recommends trying a sponge and he shows you how to bend it. Put foundation on thin, thinner where you’d like color to show through and around the eyes. Make sure it all looks even and blend it into the hairline and feather it into the neck.
2. Cream Blush: Put blush under the cheek bones. Engleman admits everyone has a different opinion about this. But you want to highlight the cheekbone, not flatten the face by putting it on the apple or the bone of the cheeks. Also add blush to the temple.
3. Concealer: He advices using a brush. Use it under the eyes, on the outer eyes for a lift, where laugh lines are, the inside of the eyes. Use darker shades for bags under the eyes.
4. Translucent Powder: Use to set the makeup. Smooth everything out. Use a patting motion and brush away the excess.
5. Contour and Shading: He says powders are easier to work with than creams. He shows you how to use your hand (for creams) and tissues (for powders) to mix up the makeup. Contour the jawline and neck, under the cheek and at the temple or the sides of the nose to correct anything you want to correct. And the sides of the face to create an oval look. Use a brush and blend with a puff.
6. The Eyes: The eye area goes from the eyebrows to the cheekbones.
   • The Brows: Brush the brows up and use a pencil and pencil in upward strokes. Use a fixer to keep the shape.
   • Shadow: He spends a lot of time on the eye shadow and how to use it, creating illusions of symmetry. He recommends a trio of purple, pinkish brown and charcoal shadows. Pinks and mauves warm up the eye, he says.
   • Eyeliner: He shows us how to line the eye, an uplift at the outer edge, and on the inside ridge of the inner eye.
   • Eyelashes: Curl them toward the outer eye. Apply mascara, separate them and you can apply twice.
7. Lips: Line with a lip pencil, apply powder and then fill in the lipstick with a brush. Then apply a darker shade of lipstick to the outer boundaries.
8. Power Blush: Again under the cheekbone, at the temple. If you’re wearing a low cut top, blush the collar bones and shoulders.

Making Faces by Kevyn Aucoin (1997)

This is Aucoin’s how-to-book of makeup, the tools of the trade and his own take on the basic females looks. Cher fell under The Exotique but she could have easily fallen under many of the others: the Innocent (60s Cher), the Vamp, the Flapper, the Starlet (70s Variety Show Cher), the Sophisticate (Vogue Cher), the Temptress, the Siren, the Icon, the Gamine, the Chanteuse, the Diva, the Ingenue, the Swinger, the Biba, the Model, the Showgirl, the Player, the Anarchist, the Purist, the Enigma, the Minimalist.

Aucoin calls Cher the most famous contemporary example of this rarified group (The Exotique). To qualify as one you must have that “indescribably hard-to-place look that is usually the mix of many ethnicities and results in the most stunning and beautiful combinations. The best makeup application always brings out their remarkable bone structure that makes them look like living sculptures.”

For this picture of Cher he used sheer foundation, apricot creme blush, brownish-burgundy creme eyeshadow, translucent face powder, medium brown eyebrow pencil, black mascara, medium flesh-toned lip pencil and petroleum jelly. Also he used an eyeshadow brush, a circular sponge and an eyelash curler.

He says to smooth foundation from center of face blending outward, put eyeshadow on the lids. under eyes as well, set the face with face powder, brush the brows and fill in with and eyebrow pencil, curl and mascara the eye lashes, line lips and add petroleum jelly to eyelids and lips with an eyeshadow brush. Alternatively you can add a high-shimmer eyeshadow, but it’s not as long lasting.

The 2000s

Face Forward by Kevyn Aucoin (2000)

This was an amazing follow-up to Making Faces because it put on display the “transformations” Aucoin was famous for doing, turning recognizable celebrities into other celebrities, often with an amazingly different look! Cher is very hard to turn into someone else. Aucoin picked a Queen but still Cher comes boldly through.

Aucoin had no shortage of celebrities willing to be in his books. My favorites were Susan Sarandon as Bette Davis, supermodel Amber Valetta as both Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, Calista Flockhart as Audrey Hepburn, Liza Minelli as Marilyn Monroe (wow), Winona Ryer as Elizabeth Taylor, Celine Dion as Maria Calla and Tina Turner as Cleopatra.

Aucoin began each makeover describing the icon represented, in Cher’s case Spanish Inquisition villain Queen Isabella. Then he talks about process. Here the point is to free yourself from restrictions or rules. It takes open-mindedness. Beauty simply is.

The same goes for inspiration: there are no set rules or prerequisites. “When Cher and I worked together on her video “Dov’è l’amore” her inspirations were the famed Spanish maidens of yesteryear–cloaked in black lace mantillas, passion, and mystery. I took the idea one step further, and was thinking specifically of the famed Spanish royal.” He talks about using rhinestones and multicolored eyeshadows.

“Have you ever met someone and felt like you’ve known them forever?….Cher has had a truly cathartic effect on me. To say she has changed my life is an understatement. We spend hours laughing at “Deep Thoughts” by Jack Handy.” He quotes a Deep Thought about a clown dressing their dog as a clown and people thinking that was “too much,” which is a particular style joke that surely would be funny to makeup artists (and I wish I could have found it online). Aucoin ends with “when I think of Cher I smile, not only because she holds a sacred space for everyone who feels ‘different,’ but also because she makes me feel very loved.”

His instructions: prep the face with moisturizer, blend pale foundation followed by concealer if needed, fill the brows with dark brown eyebrow pencil, line eyes inside and out with a basic black eye pencil and then lightly smudge into the lash line. Define the crease of the eye with dark brown powder eyeshadow and blend well. Using diamante stones and eyelash glue, apply clear sones on the inner corner of eye and move outward gradating with iridescent stones, then pink, red, burgundy and black. Use the color of stones as you would use a dark eyeshadow to create depth. Apply individual false eyelashes along top and bottom of the eye and follow with a coat of black mascara. With a blush brush, dust soft pink powder blush to cheeks, temples and chin. Line and fill lips with light, flesh lip pencil and finish off with a coat of opalescent lip gloss.

In another section, Alexandra von Furstenberg becomes 1970s-era Cher, complete with the hair, hoop earrings and eye makeup. Aucoin calls her as “breathtakingly beautiful as Cher…[with both of their] almond-shaped eyes and perfectly oval face. Von Furstenberg is even wearing one of Cher’s original TV gowns.

Aucoin remarks on Cher’s “velvet smooth voice and underrated sense of humor. No one looked, sounded or acted like her before (or since).” He calls Cher “a sharp, brazen, independent spirit with soft edges. In the age of ‘I Am Woman’ she was the real deal.” Aucoin talks about using a defined bend of the eyebrow and a defined crease of the eye and he used white eyeshadow at the inner corners for a dewy look. He also only lined the outer half of Von Furstenberg’s eyes and blended the line for a smokey look,

The same dress on Cher:

The 2010s

When the movie Burlesque came out (2010), there were movie promos including this beautiful case full of Mac makeup products.

In the article How Talking to Cher Helped Gregory Arlt’s Makeup Career (2017) Gregory Arlt, the director of makeup artistry at MAC Cosmetics, says “the first loyal was Fran Drescher…and soon after Cher came along.”

At the time (1999), Cher was an executive producer of a makeover show [called] Style Challenge.” [Sadly, this show never came to be]. Arlt goes on to say he went to the MAC store to get makeup and “Cher was in the store shopping. All by herself, looking at lipstick…I ended up designing Cher’s makeup for the tour.”

About the Cher tour Arlt says, “it’s an amazing process. I love collaborating. I sat down with  the creative director of the tour. She showed me the costumes and the set design–there were eight to nine changes. I then flew to Toronto to meet with Cher and talk about it. I thought how she doesn’t have time to change her makeup so it had to be one look that could encompass her. We did face charts and did the look itself. Cher then asked if we could add Swarovski crystals. Of course she could, she’s Cher.”

Arlt talks about how he made red eyeshadow work: “It’s theatrical. It’s an accessory and you go all out. It should be more pink-toned, if it’s too much you’ll look a lab rat. Cher liked that pinky-red.”

The 2020s

In the YouTube video “I tried Cher’s Favorite Shampoo and Conditioner for a Week!” (2022) an influencer goes through recent Cher product plugs. One is the MAC Brow-Set gel.

From the article in Marie Claire (2023) we get Cher’s Take on the French Manicure Features a Glitzy Detail but also with makeup details: Cher’s glittery eye makeup with neutral eye shadow, her glossy pink lips and fully brushed-up brows.”

In 2024 Cher told BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs that her mother said you only needed an eyelash curler on a deserted island. Cher built on on this when talking to People Magazine in 2026. Here she said her mom said “always have an eyelash curler and lip gloss on hand.”

In the book Style Codes: Cher by Natalie Hammond (2025), style code #7 is to shake-up your makeup. The book talks about how Cher loved to see her mother and her mother’s friends get made up. Hammond talks about Cher’s use of eyeliner of the 1960s that extended past the edges of her eyes and her unadorned lips. Later there were bolder lips, multicolored eyelids, shaded cheekbones, big eyelashes and an arched brow.

Hammond singles out the dark lips on the It’s a Man’s World album cover, the larger-than-life eyes, her metallic pigments lash to brow, the blocks of color for her appearance on 1983s Academy Awards. Cher loves purple, Hammond says, and she says false eyelash sets are less intimidating that individual lashes but they can help you get eyes “volumized to the max” like Cher.