text: After celebrating her birthday and going to sleep “dreaming these fabulous thoughts of being 40,” Cher was awoken by a phone call from Miller, who was set to direct her in The Witches of Eastwick alongside Nicholson. Here’s what he allegedly said, at least to Cher’s recollection: “Hi, Cher, it’s George Miller…I just wanted to call and tell you that I don’t want you in my movie and Jack Nicholson and I think you’re too old and you’re not sexy.”
  Cher described how Miller’s cruel words brought her to tears and that instead of hanging up the phone after his initial insult, he reportedly continued. “‘I hate the way you walk,” he allegedly told her. “I hate the way you talk, I don’t like the color of your hair, I don’t like your eyes.” But at that point in her career, Cher wasn’t the kind of impressionable ingénue who might have let a powerful director get away with speaking to her like that. She was Cher, dammit, and she let Miller know it. “Okay, look motherf–ker,” she told him. “You didn’t find me under a rock. I was nominated for an Academy Award for Silkwood. And I got the Cannes Film Festival award for best actress for Mask.’” Her clapback must’ve worked since she ended up getting the part in The Witches of Eastwick alongside Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer.