The World According to Cher
June 20 -- — She's sporting a blond wig these days instead of her famous black tresses. But at her roots, Cher says she hasn't changed.
"I never ever ever changed that part of me because you can't change who you really are," says the 55-year-old. "Underneath all this fluff and crap is me … it's just me. It's just me like I was 6 years old. I haven't changed in all that time."
Despite her conviction that she knows exactly who she is, she says she has never felt like she belongs.
"I always felt, and I still do, just on the outside, just on the perimeter of everything," she told ABCNEWS' Cynthia McFadden in an interview for Primetime. "Actors don't consider me an actress. Singers don't consider me a singer."
But the Academy Award winning-actress and Grammy-winning pop diva knows what she wants.
"I really want to be able to get up there in my size 27 jeans and dance around the stage, and look good, you know?" she says. "I'm trying to keep the package viable."
She is keeping her acting credits fresh with a role in a new film version of Mame — being produced by rival diva Barbara Streisand. "And that won't stop me either," Cher says.
If she ever lost her sexual allure, she said, "I'd just go in a different direction, like a bumper car. I hit a wall and I move to the side."
Keeping "the package viable," has entailed plastic surgery — but not to the extent that has been reported in the tabloids, she says.
"If I'd had as much plastic surgery as they [say], you know, like I've got ass implants and calf implants and cheek implants," she says. "I've had the same cheeks my entire life. No butt lifts. No ribs removed."
And even if she had, she wouldn't be ashamed.
"If I want to put my tits on my back, it's nobody's business but my own," she says.
This interview was originally broadcast on Primetime Feb. 28, 2002.
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