American advocate, writer, musician and actor, and the only child of entertainers Cher and Sonny Bono. Originally known as their daughter and named Chastity Sun Bono, today he is known as Chaz Bono, a transgender man (or “trans man”). Between 2008 and 2010, he underwent female-to-male gender transition. In May 2010, he legally changed his gender and name. A documentary on Bono’s experience, Becoming Chaz, was screened at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and later made its television debut on the Oprah Winfrey Network.
Bono was named Chastity Sun Bono after the film Chastity, which was produced by Sonny and in which Cher (in her first solo role in a feature film) played a bisexual woman. When Sonny and Cher divorced in 1975, Cher had legal custody of Chastity but the young Bono was always allowed to spend time with both parents. Sonny made a point of living nearby in order that Chastity had free access to see him. Shielded from the glare of publicity while growing up, Chastity Bono graduated from the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute in 1987 and went to the New York University Tisch School of the Arts.
Bono began writing songs with a pal, Chance, and they formed a group with four young men. In January 1994, Bono became the vocalist and co-leader of a rock group called “Ceremony.” The group’s debut album was entitled “Hand Out Your Poetry.” In 1994, Chas’ lover died of cancer after a painful battle. A year later Bono came out publicly as a lesbian in the gay publication, “The Advocate.” The article that Bono wrote was life changing.
In 1996 Bono joined GLAAD, Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, becoming the entertainment industry’s unofficial advisor on all things homosexual, wielding growing clout in Hollywood. A reasonable, not rabid, activist, Bono aimed at aiding an increase of understanding and tolerance. Bono worked as their media director until leaving in 1998 to pursue other interests.
Bono’s father Sonny was killed on 6 January 1998 at the Heavenly Ski Resort on the California/Nevada border. He died of massive head injuries suffered after hitting a tree at a rapid rate of speed.
To help others deal with their gay choices, Bono wrote “Family Outing,” 1998, a guidebook that uses real-life examples to show young gay people the rewards and pitfalls that go with being open about being gay or lesbian.
Chas Bono’s own experience was of being a tomboy as a kid. At 13, on seeing Mariel Hemingway kissing another woman in a movie, Bono had a revelation. “Suddenly I got it,” Bono recalled. “I got me.” While a freshman at New York University in fall 1987, Bono decided to come out as lesbian to Sonny and Cher. Sonny took the news in stride but Cher flipped out and banished Chas from the house. In time, it was Cher who accepted Chas unconditionally, and Sonny who never became reconciled to Chas’s sexual life style.
In 1992 Bono began a serious relationship with “Joan,” a woman 20 years older, which ended tragically when the woman died of cancer two years later. By 1998, Bono was keeping a new relationship private to avoid the glare of the press.
In early June 2009 Chas Bono announced that he had begun the transgender process to become male. Bono’s legal transition was completed on 8 May 2010, when a California court granted his request for a gender and name change. He chose the name “Chaz Salvatore Bono” in honour of his parents.
In September 2011, Chaz Bono became a competitor on the 13th season of the US version of Dancing with the Stars, paired with professional ballroom dancer Lacey Schwimmer. The duo was eliminated on 25 October 2011. This was the first time an openly transgender man starred on a major network television show for something unrelated to being transgender.
Link to Wikipedia biography