Cher (born Cherilyn Sarkisian) is a world-famous US singer and actress.
Illness
In the late 1980s, Cher contracted the chronic Epstein-Barr virus (CEBV) and developed chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), which was complicated by pneumonia. Too exhausted to continue with her music and film careers, Cher was forced to stop working for two years while she recovered.
Cher turned to infomercials to make money before she was able to restart performing on stage and her film career.
Interviews
“What sounds like jaded ennui is really Epstein-Barr. Cher discovered she carried the energy-sapping virus during the filming of The Witches of Eastwick in 1986, but she wasn’t fully aware of the disease’s debilitating force until she began her latest film, Mermaids, which opens next month. Production had to be shut down while she regained her strength.
“I was so sick I thought I was going to die. I went to doctor after doctor.”
— Vanity Fair (1990)
In an interview with USA Today in 2008, Cher was reported as saying:
“I was sick a long time,” she says. “I went to Germany for some medicine and treatment. They have things overseas we never dreamed existed. When I was first diagnosed in the late ’80s, I had doctors telling me I was crazy. I was sick constantly and almost died from pneumonia. You never lose it, and it really takes the life out of you.”
In 2007, Cher suffered from another debilitating bout of Epstein-Barr virus, but recovered.
When asked in a BBC interview if she thought the illness was psychosomatic, Cher replied, “My experience was that it was really a physical illness — but it does make you depressed as well … Boy, it was devastating for me.”
