Georgia Holt, actress and mother of Cher, dies aged 96

Cher‘s mother Georgia Holt – actress, model and singer – died this weekend at the age of 96.

The pop icon announced the sad news on her Twitter account on Saturday morning. Write just “Mom’s gone” next to a sad emoji. In September, Cher first announced that her parents had health issues and shared that she had been hospitalized with pneumonia. “I’m sorry I was Mia. Mom’s Been Sick Off & On,” she said wrote back then. “She just got out of Hosp. She had pneumonia,” adding in a follow-up tweet, “She’s getting better.”

No further details were released.

Cher, 76, also previously explained all the extra precautions she’s been taking during the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure her elderly mother stays safe and healthy. she said persons in 2020 that she was tested for coronavirus “all the time” and was “very cautious” in the run-up to the holiday season. “We have a little bubble that we’ve had all along,” she said. “We wear masks and we are not very many. It’s my sister, my brother-in-law, my mother, my assistant. And we stay far apart.” The singer explained, “I also have to be careful because I have asthma … I have various health issues.”

In 2013, Cher released an hour-long special on Lifetime entitled Dear Mom, dear Cher, dedicated to sharing some of the life lessons Holt taught her and her half-sister, the actress Georganne LaPiere, grow up. “She never gave me or my sister any advice because, honestly, she knew we would never take it,” Cher said of her mother in the documentary. “Instead, we learned about life by listening to her talk about the things she did wrong and the things she did right.”

Holt was born Jackie Jean Crouch in Arkansas in 1926 to 13-year-old Lynda Inez Gulley and 21-year-old Roy Malloy Crouch. While working at a donut shop in Fresno, California, she met truck driver John Sarkisian, and they ran together to Reno, Nevada to get married. But she told persons 1978: “I left him the day after [the wedding]. I knew I didn’t want to get married. But he told me to try for three months and if I didn’t like it I could leave. Well, before the three months were up, I was pregnant with Cher.” Holt would marry five more times in her lifetime.

After moving to Los Angeles, Holt booked her first major acting roles in television series such as The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and i love lucy. She also performed The Mike Douglas Show and The Merv Griffin Show. In 1980 she was offered a contract by Columbia Records and recorded her debut album. Honky tonk woman, backed by members of Elvis Presley’s band and performing a duet with her famous daughter. However, the album was not released until 2013 after the master tapes were rediscovered in Holt’s garage. she said persons“I know a record company might want to sign me just because I’m Cher’s mom. I would like to have a career, but I will not be a novelty or a flash in the pan. A lot of people say I can do it.”

According to Holt, she was married three times by the time she was 21 The Hollywood Reporter. Her husbands were Sarkisian, John Southall, Joseph Harper Collins, Chris Alcaide, banker Gilbert La Pierre (who adopted Cher and Georganne), again Sarkisian, and Hamilton Holt.