Cher trashes her “Mask” director Peter Bogdanovich, calls him 'an a--hole' and 'a pig': 'I really, really disliked him'

Bogdanovich, meanwhile, called her the most difficult actor he ever worked with.

Cher has never been known to hold back.

The singer/actress/gelato master held up her reputation Friday when she spoke frankly about why she didn't get along with late Mask director Peter Bogdanovich in a Friday interview with The Times.

"He was an a--hole," she said. "He was not nice to the girls in the film and he was so f---ing arrogant. I really, really disliked him."

She pinpointed a particularly difficult scene during filming of the 1985 movie, in which she plays the mother of a teenage boy with a severe facial deformity. Eric Stoltz portrays her son.

"He comes in and says, 'Cher, where do you think we should film this scene?' And I say, well, the kitchen is working pretty well, why don't we do that again? The next morning he arrives on set, eating an egg sandwich, and starts screaming that he's not going to let me direct this film; I'm a nobody; he can cut me out at any moment. Oh yeah, he was a pig."

Related: Christina Ricci says Cher protected her on Mermaids set: 'She never wanted me to feel insecure'

The conversation about Bogdanovich began when she spoke about directors she didn't like. It was a small category: just Frank Oz, who helmed her 1990 movie Mermaids before being replaced, and Bogdanovich. His other directing credits included The Last Picture Show, What's Up Doc?, Paper Moon, and Daisy Miller.

When asked if, in the case of Bogdanovich and Mask, she had actually been trying to take his job, Cher said no.

"Ask everybody: I'm really easy to work with. I'm not arbitrary in the things I say, because it's right to do what the director wants until you need to speak up," said Cher, who received advice for dealing with directors from her Silkwood costar, the acclaimed Meryl Streep.

Related: Cher says she's talked about third Mamma Mia movie, wants Meryl Streep to return

"Meryl says that if the director wants you to do something you don't like, you say: yes, yes, yes, I'll do it that way. Then you do it your way, and they don't even notice. I've worked with Bob Altman, Mike Nichols, Norman Jewison…really great directors whom I respect. I know when to listen."

Cher told the same story in December on The Graham Norton Show, but she added the fact that, later in the scene, he touched her.

"And I said, 'Get your f---ing hands off of me,'" she said to cheers from the audience.

Related: Cher asked Lucille Ball for advice on how to leave Sonny Bono

Bogdanovich died in 2022, but he made it clear that the animosity was mutual. He cited her as the most difficult actor he had ever worked with.

"She didn't trust anybody, especially men," Bogdanovich told Vulture in January 2022. "That's why she dropped her father's name, Sarkisian."

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Bogdanovich took sole credit for Cher having won the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1985 for Mask.

"She can't act. She won Best Actress at Cannes because I shot her very well," he said. "She can't sustain a scene — she'd go off wrong somehow, very quickly. So I shot a lot of close-ups of her because she's very good in close-ups. Her eyes have the sadness of the world. You get to know her, you find out it’s self-pity, but still, it translates well in movies."

In 1988, Cher won the Best Actress Oscar for Moonstruck, which was directed by Jewison.