EXCLUSIVE: Cher Laid Bare — Diva Reveals Her Best and Worst Showbiz Moments Including How Getting Booted Out of Hotel Changed Her Life

If you can last long enough, people take you seriously," said Cher, who scored her first No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, I Got You Babe, at age 19. Since then, she's rarely stood still in a career that has survived seven decades and won her Oscar, Emmy and Grammy awards, RadarOnline.com can reveal. Still, it hasn't all been gold trophies and applause.

"I wouldn't have chosen the horrible downs," Cher, 79, confided. "The fabulous ups I would have chosen, but not the other."

In her two-part autobiography, Cher: The Memoir, Cher looked back at her triumphs and heartbreaks. "My life seems to be longer than any other human being ever," joked the beloved singer.

Cher admitted she has a lot of mixed emotions about her years with her first husband, Sonny Bono. The pair met in 1962 when Bono was working as a record producer for Phil Spector and Cher was looking for a break. They recorded together as Caesar & Cleo, and Cher cut singles under the name Cherilyn, but nothing caught fire.

"America hated us, so we sold everything and came to London," recalled Cher, who credited getting kicked out of a London Hilton for wearing hippie clothing as a pivotal moment in Bono and Cher's unlikely success.

"By the time we reached the Hilton's revolving doors, escorted in person by the manager, there were two reporters standing outside," she remembered. "We slept for 12 hours straight, and by the time we'd bathed and dressed, we were famous."

I Got You Babe became a No. 1 hit in the U.K., the U.S. and Canada, but success proved fleeting. By the end of the 1960s, soft pop had fallen out of fashion and they were dropped by their record label. "If you can't get a record deal, it can't be more over than that," said Cher.

"It's the idea that you worked your whole life, and then it's, 'We don't want to waste our time on you.' That's a big deal for a singer."

After mortgaging their home to make their first film, 1969's Chastity, which flopped, the pair landed in Las Vegas, where Cher's costumes and comic put-downs of her husband won a following. They brought their act to TV with The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour in 1971. During its three-year run, 30 million viewers tuned in every week to watch the couple sing, do comedy bits and exchange one-liners. As a solo artist, Cher also triumphed with the radio hits Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves, Half-Breed, and Dark Lady.

In 1975, her divorce from Sonny thrust Cher into uncharted territory. "I was with him from 16 to 27. I didn't have the skills that a person needed, really, to take care of themself," she admitted. "I had to start from scratch, and I made lots and lots of mistakes."

Her career suffered, too. Cher released a string of flops and even took some half-hearted attempts at disco and hard rock albums. "I've had lots of failures," admitted Cher, who said she has only reinvented herself out of necessity. "It was just that I fell out of grace, or I didn't have a job, or wasn't doing something."

In 1982, she moved to NYC to take classes with the Actors Studio. After a stint on Broadway, Cher landed the role of Meryl Streep's roommate in 1983's Silkwood. Excited about the film, she went to a theater to watch a prerelease trailer for it, but she didn't anticipate the audience's reaction to her first serious acting job.

"[The credits] said, 'Cher,' and everybody started laughing, the entire theater," she said, calling the experience "heartbreaking beyond belief."

She proved them wrong. Silkwood won Cher a Golden Globe Award. A few years later, she even bested her friend and Silkwood costar Streep in the Best Actress category to take home an Oscar for Moonstruck. "Until I became an actress, I never felt like an artist," Cher said. "I never felt like I was worthwhile."

She eventually returned to music and earned the biggest hit of her career with 1998's Believe, which won her the first Grammy of her long career. "With Believe, I changed the sound of music forever, and it was an accident," admitted Cher, who allowed her producer to use a pitch machine on her vocals, which would be nicknamed "the Cher Effect." "I honestly think the most fun I ever had making a song was Believe."

Of course, in February, Cher received another Grammy – she was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award.

But the night didn't exactly go off without a hitch.

After accepting the award, she forgot to present Record of the Year, then, in a moment of confusion, accidentally announced the late Luther Vandross as the winner instead of Kendrick Lamar and SZA for "Luther."

But the incomparable Cher took it all in stride.

"She's happy with it. She had a great time," reported Grammy executive producer Ben Winston, adding, "You want a bit of anarchy."