Chaz Salvatore Bono
Bono is a trans man. In 1995, while then presenting as a woman, and several years after being Outing as lesbian by the tabloid press, Bono publicly self-identified as a lesbian in a cover story in a leading American gay monthly magazine, The Advocate. Bono eventually went on to discuss the process of coming out to oneself and others in two books. Family Outing: A Guide to the Coming Out Process for Gays, Lesbians, and Their Families (1998) includes his coming-out account. The memoir The End of Innocence (2003) discusses his outing, music career, and partner Joan's death from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Between 2008 and 2010, Bono sought out gender-affirming care, commonly called gender transition. A two-part Entertainment Tonight feature in June 2009 explained that his medical transition had started a year before.["Chaz Bono", June 15–16, 2009, Entertainment Tonight.] In May 2010, he legally changed his ID to match his gender and name.
Early life
Bono was born in
Los Angeles, California, the only child of
Cher and
Sonny Bono of the pop duo Sonny & Cher, stars of a TV variety show on which the young child often appeared. Bono was named after the film
Chastity, which was produced by Sonny and in which Cher (in her first solo role in a feature film) played a
bisexuality woman.
[Bryant, Wayne, M. (1996). Bisexual Characters in Film, from Anaïs to Zee. Haworth Press. p. 117. ] Through his mother, Bono is of
Armenians, Irish, English, and German ancestry. He is of Italian descent through his father.
[: Sarkisian's profession; : Sarkisian's nationality and personal problems, Crouch's profession; : Crouch's ancestry.]
Bono was enrolled at the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in New York City.
Ceremony
Bono began a short music career in 1988 with the band Ceremony,
which released one album,
Hang Out Your Poetry, in 1993. The band featured Bono on vocals, acoustic guitar, and percussion. Other members were Steve March Tormé (backup vocals), Heidi Shink a.k.a. Chance,
Pete McRae, Steve Bauman, Louis Ruiz, and Bryn Mathieu. All but one of the band's songs were written or co-written by Bono, Shink, and Mark Hudson. They used no synthesizers or digital effects on the album; Shink noted, "We turned our back on technology. It's reminiscent of the 60s, but more a tip of the hat than emulating it. We took the music we love and rejuvenated it, made it 90s."
Critical reception of the album was lukewarm, with Roch Parisien of Allmusic describing
Hang Out Your Poetry as a mildly psychedelic take on early 1990s pop, "pleasant, accessible, well-produced ear-candy that's ultimately toothless".
The songs "Could've Been Love" and "Ready for Love" were released as singles from the album. Sonny and Cher also recorded backing vocals for the track "Livin' It Up" on the album.
LGBTQ activism
In April 1995, Bono came out as a lesbian in an interview with
The Advocate, a national gay and lesbian magazine.
The 1998 book
Family Outing detailed how Bono's coming out "catapulted me into a political role that has transformed my life, providing me with affirmation as a lesbian, as a woman, and as an individual."
In the same book, Bono reported that Cher, who was both a gay icon and an ally of
LGBTQ communities, was quite uncomfortable with the news at first and "went ballistic"
before coming to terms with it: "By August 1996, one year after I came out publicly, my mother had progressed so far that she agreed to 'come out' herself on the cover of
The Advocate as the proud mother of a lesbian daughter."
Cher has since become an outspoken
LGBTQ rights activist.
Bono's paternal relationship became strained after his father became a Republican Congressman from California. The differences in their political views separated them, and the two had not spoken for more than a year at the time of Sonny's fatal skiing accident in January 1998.
Bono worked as a writer at large for The Advocate.
In June 2016, the Human Rights Campaign released a video in tribute to the victims of the Orlando nightclub shooting; in the video, Bono and others told the stories of the people killed there.
Transition
In mid-2008, Bono began undergoing a physical and social transition from female to male. This was confirmed in June 2009 by his publicist,
who identified Bono's name as
Chaz Bono and said, "It is Chaz's hope that his choice to transition will open the hearts and minds of the public regarding this issue, just as his coming out did."
and the Empowering Spirits Foundation were quick to offer praise and support for the announcement.
Bono's legal transition was completed on May 6, 2010, when a California court granted his request for a gender and name change.
Bono made
Becoming Chaz, a documentary film about his transition that premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. The Oprah Winfrey Network acquired the rights to the documentary and debuted it on May 10, 2011.
In September 2011, he became a competitor on the 13th season of the U.S. version of Dancing with the Stars, paired with professional ballroom dancer Lacey Schwimmer.
His book, Transition: Becoming Who I Was Always Meant to Be was published in 2012, making him the first person of Armenian descent to publish a memoir about being an openly transgender man.
Filmography
Film
|
| 1994 | Bar Girls | Scorp' | |
| 2004 | Fronterz | | |
| 2016 | Dirty | Jerry the Hoarder | |
| 2019 | 3 from Hell | Digby Neville | |
| 2020 | | Himself | Documentary film |
| 2020 | Reboot Camp | Herbert | mockumentary |
| 2023 | The Bell Keeper | Sheriff Carlson | |
| 2024 | Little Bites | Paul | Also executive producer |
Television
|
| 1972–77 | The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour | Himself | 32 episodes |
| 1975 | Cher | Himself | Episode 2.14 |
| 1997 | Ellen | The Moderator | Episode: "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah" |
| 2011 | Becoming Chaz | Himself | Documentary film |
| Dancing with the Stars | Himself | 6 episodes |
| 2012 | | Himself | Episode: "Tonight, Tonight: Part 2" |
| 2013 | The Secret Life of the American Teenager | Himself | Episode: "To Each Her Own" |
| 2014 | RuPaul's Drag Race | Himself/Guest Judge | "Queens of Talk" |
| 2016 | The Bold and the Beautiful | Reverend Rydale | 5 episodes |
| Brian Wells (Lot Polk, re-enactment) | 4 episodes |
| Where the Bears Are | Gavin Kelly | 3 episodes |
| 2017 | | Gary K. Longstreet | 8 episodes |
| 2018 | Adi Shankar's Gods and Secrets | | Upcoming series |
| 2020 | Curb Your Enthusiasm | Joey Funkhouser | Episode: "The Spite Store" |
Bibliography
-
Family Outing (with Billie Fitzpatrick) (1998). Little, Brown and Company. pp. 272.
-
The End of Innocence: A Memoir (with Michele Kort) (2003). pp. 232.
-
Transition: The story of how I became a man (with Billie Fitzpatrick) (2011). New York: Dutton.
-
Transition: Becoming Who I Was Always Meant to Be (with Billie Fitzpatrick) (2012 paperback). Plume. pp. 272.
Notes
Works cited
External links
