
In 1982, Cher was starring in Broadway show Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean when she noticed a man waiting for her at the stage door.
She figured he would give her a handshake.
"I thought he was going to shake my hand, and he grabbed my arm and put it behind my back," she told The Guardian.
Watch: The wildest Met Gala looks of all time, because you know Cher's on the list. Post continues below video.
"He started pushing me down the alleyway, and he said: 'If you make a sound, I'll kill you.
"Two fans, who later became friends, saw something was wrong, and they started screaming and ran towards me, and he ran away."
Cher said she is far more hesitant to go out in public these days.
"I don't like going out now because everybody's got a camera and it's not safe. People rush you, and you don't know if they’re going to kill you or take your picture. Either way, I don't like it."
Every aspect of Cher's life has been played out in public - at least for the last 55 years.
Cher was born in 1946 to model and actress Georgia Holt and truck driver John Sarkisian. Her parents divorced when she was 10 months old, and Holt later married actor John Southall whom she had another daughter, Georganne.
Struggling financially, Holt briefly placed Cher in a Catholic orphanage where nuns urged her to place her daughter up for adoption.
"I heard the abortion story when I was a teenager," Cher said in a 2013 TV special, referring to the fact her mother had contemplated abortion after discovering she was pregnant at 20 years old.
"The orphanage story has been a touchy one for my mum her whole life, and she didn't want to talk about it. I said, 'Mum, why didn't you just march in and take me?' She said, 'I didn't have the power. I didn't have any money or a job, and the church was so strong. I'd go see you every day and you'd be crying. You don't know what it was like.' It was harder for women then."