Cher Had A "Really Hard Time" With Chaz's Surgery

Cher is lighting up the big screen again in the musical film Burlesque. The 64-year-old living legend opens up to Parade about having a "really hard time" when her daughter Chastity underwent gender-transition surgery to become a man named Chaz. She also talks about her 34-year-old son Elijah, whom she helped kick a heroin addiction.

When Chaz first told me about wanting a sex change, I had a really hard time with it,” Cher admits. “We talked about the transgendered thing intermittently for years. She was unhappy. Plus, she was doing drugs. [Chaz was addicted to OxyContin]. I believed that once she stopped drugs, she would have a much better life and put the transgender idea on the back burner.”

But after kicking her drug habit in 2004, Chaz became more determined than ever to make the change. “She said to me, ‘If I’m ever going to do it, I’ve got to do it now. I’m 40,’ ” Cher says. “I went, ‘If you’ve got to do it, dear, you’ve got to do it.’ ”

In May, Chaz’s gender and name were legally changed. Cher admits she was worried: “When I realized she was going to do it, it was rocky for me. I thought, What will the press do to her? What will they do to the two of us together? It’s going to be the biggest nightmare that will not stop. But the press was kinder than I thought they would be.”

Cher says she admires Chaz's courage. “It’s hard, ’cause she’s still my girl. But she has an inner strength and she’s a courageous person—she believes what she believes. She and her girlfriend came over for dinner last night. All of us were there, my boyfriend too.”

Cher also opens up about her son Elijah with second husband, rocker Gregg Allman.

“Gregory was a Southern gentleman who also happened to be a heroin addict. I kept going to rehab with him to help him try to kick drugs. It was very hard for him. Then Elijah was born, and a year later I left Gregory for good. As crazy as I was about him, I wasn’t going to let him be around my kids.”

Their son Elijah Blue, now 34, struggled with heroin dependency, but has been drug-free since an intervention organized by Cher in 2003. “Elijah’s doing really well,” she says. “He’s a good artist, a painter. He’s been asked by Louis Vuitton to design a label for them.”