Chaz Salvatore Bono born Chastity Sun Bono; March 4, 1969 is an American transgender advocate, writer, actor, and musician. Bono is the only child that American entertainers Sonny and Cher had together, though each had children from other relationships. Bono is a female-to-male transgender man. Around age 39, Bono underwent female-to-male gender transition. A two-part Entertainment Tonight feature in June 2009 explained that Bono’s transition had started a year before. In May 2010, Bono legally changed gender and name. Bono made a documentary about his life which debuted on OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network.
In 1995, after several years of being outed as lesbian by the tabloid press, Bono publicly self-identified as such in a cover story in a leading American gay monthly magazine, The Advocate. Bono went on to discuss the process of coming out to oneself and to others in two books. Family Outing: A Guide to the Coming Out Process for Gays, Lesbians, and Their Families (1998) includes the author’s coming out account. The memoir, The End of Innocence (2003) discusses the author’s outing, music career, and partner Joan’s death from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Bono is the only child of Cher and Sonny Bono of the pop duo Sonny & Cher, who had a TV variety show on which the young child often appeared. Bono was named Chastity Sun Bono after the film Chastity, which was produced by Sonny, in which Cher (in her first feature film) played a bisexual woman. The film had its première shortly before Bono’s birth in 1969. Bono came out to both parents as lesbian at age 18. In Family Outing, Bono wrote that, “as a child, I always felt there was something different about me. I’d look at other girls my age and feel perplexed by their obvious interest in the latest fashion, which boy in class was the cutest, and who looked the most like cover girl Christie Brinkley. When I was 13, I finally found a name for exactly how I was different. I realized I was gay.
