Georgia Holt, Actress and Cher’s Mother, Dies at 96

Cher‘s mother, Georgia Holt—an actress, model, and singer—died this weekend at age 96.

The pop icon announced the sad news on her Twitter account on Saturday morning, writing simply, “Mom is gone,” alongside a sad-face emoji. In September, Cher first revealed that her parent was having some health difficulties, sharing that she had been hospitalized with pneumonia. “Sorry I’ve Been Mia. Mom’s Been Sick Off & On,” she wrote at the time. “She Just Got Out Of Hosp. She Had Pneumonia,” adding in a follow-up tweet, “She’s Getting Better.”

No further details have been released. 

Cher, 76, also previously explained all the extra precautions she took during the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure her elderly mother stayed safe and healthy. She told People in 2020 that she was getting tested for coronavirus “all the time” and was being “very careful” in the lead-up to the holiday season. “We have a little bubble that we’ve had all this time,” she said. “We wear masks, and there’s not very many of us. It’s my sister, my brother-in-law, my mom, my assistant. And we stay far apart from each other.” The singer explained, “I have to be careful too because I have asthma…I have different health problems.”

In 2013, Cher released a one-hour special on Lifetime titled Dear Mom, Love Cher, dedicated to sharing some of the life lessons Holt had taught her and her half-sister, actress Georganne La Piere, growing up. “She never gave me and my sister advice because, truthfully, she knew we’d 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, the daughter of 13-year-old Lynda Inez Gulley and 21-year-old Roy Malloy Crouch. While working at a doughnut shop in Fresno, California, she met truck driver John Sarkisian, and they ran off to Reno, Nevada together to get married. But she told People in 1978, “I left him the day after [the wedding]. I knew I didn’t want to be married. But he told me to try it for three months, and if I didn’t like it, then I could walk out. Well, before three months was out, I was pregnant with Cher.” Holt would go on to get married five more times over the course of her life.

After moving to Los Angeles, Holt booked her first big acting roles in TV series like The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and I Love Lucy. She also appeared on 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 featuring a duet with her famous daughter. However, the album wasn’t released until 2013 after the master tapes were rediscovered in Holt’s garage. She told People, “I know that a record company might want to sign me just because I’m Cher’s mother. I’d like to have a career, but I’m not going to be a novelty or a flash in the pan. A lot of people say I can do it.”

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