On TV, Sonny and Cher seemed like a dream couple. For Cher, the truth was much darker.

When Cher and Sonny Bono burst onto the scene with their hit song 'I Got You Babe' in 1965, they instantly became the picture of a perfect Hollywood couple.

Their variety show, The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, cemented their celebrity status, the pair charming audiences with their humour, chemistry and talent.

But behind the scenes, the couple were far from perfect. And, for Cher, her reality was much darker.

Cher, now 78, has just released a new memoir, The Cher: Memoir, Part One. Here, we break down everything Cher has said about her relationship with Sonny — and what fans didn't see going on behind closed doors.

Watch: Cher performs 'If I Could Turn Back Time'. Post continues after video.

Before Sonny, Cher dated Warren Beatty.

When Cher was 15 years old, she was driving down Sunset Boulevard when she was cut off by a convertible. Getting out the car to confront the driver, she realised it was Hollywood legend Warren Beatty.

Finding the 25-year-old "so drop dead gorgeous," Cher said she had to steady herself. To apologise for cutting her off, Beatty bought the teenager cigarettes and invited her back to his place in Beverly Hills.

Here, they kissed and went for a late night swim. They went on a few dates, but by the final time Beatty asked Cher out officially, she was already with Sonny.

"He said, 'Do you want to go to dinner?' I said, 'Well, I have a boyfriend.' He said, 'Okay, do you want to go to lunch?' It was so cute and so him," Cher wrote.

Sonny and Cher began as roommates.

When Cher first met Sonny in 1962 in a Los Angeles coffee shop, she was a 16-year-old runaway.

"I was living on couches and running out of places to go," Cher wrote.

She was staying with a friend, Melissa, when Sonny moved in next door. The 27-year-old was initially interested in Melissa, who was gay and rejected his advances.

When Melissa eventually kicked Cher out, Sonny invited her to move in. He told the singer he didn't find her attractive, but she could live with him rent-free if she cooked and cleaned.

"That's how I became the potty-mouthed sidekick to a man 11 years older than me who was in the middle of a divorce," said Cher.

Cher didn't think Sonny was 'a catch'.

Despite her love for Sonny early on, Cher deemed him "kind of childish".

She added that Sonny liked her because the 16-year-old had no expectations.

"I didn't want money, I didn't think about anything, you know. And all these other women that were his age, they wanted him to be a grown up," she wrote.

Cher also said that almost all of Sonny's previous relationships "remained casual".

"He certainly wasn't looking for love and most of the women were looking for a man who could support them," she said.

"He was charming and funny, but he had no money, drove an old Chevy Monza, and lived in a one-bedroom apartment with a random teenager. He wasn't a catch."

Their first wedding wasn't official.

Just weeks after divorcing his first wife in 1963, Sonny proposed to Cher.

"Sitting in a park one day listening to a guy playing sax, he turned to me and said, 'Don't you think it's time you asked me to marry you?'" Cher wrote.

At the time, she was too young to wed without her parents' permission.

They went on to have an impromptu marriage ceremony in the bathroom of their home, with no witnesses. A year later, when Cher was 18, a press release annouced they'd married in Tijuana. In her memoir, the singer revealed this was a publicity cover up for their first marriage when she was underage.

However, they didn't legally marry until Cher was pregnant in 1968. Again, the ceremony took place at their home — this time, with witnesses.

"The ceremony had to be done quickly and privately so nobody would find out we had been faking our marriage from the beginning," she wrote.

Sonny was jealous of Cher.

According to the now-78-year-old, when Sonny realised Cher was a better dancer than him, it made him "uncomfortable".

"But he also didn't want me going dancing on my own either," she penned.

She added that he "wasn't the best paino player".

"He didn't know that many chords so he wrote all our songs with the same three or four."

Cher claimed Sonny cheated. A lot.

Cher recalled waking up in the middle of the night to find Sonny in the living room, cheating on her with their secretary.

The performer told her mother, who confessed she'd been "hearing stories about him for some time now".

A mutual friend would go on to tell Cher that Sonny had allegedly been with dancers, actresses, waitresses, and even sex workers.

Cher said that she "couldn't imagine where he found the time".

Then, at her 29th birthday party, Sonny apparently attended with one of Cher's girlfriend's.

"We figured that [best friend] Paulette, [half-sister] Gee, and Chas' nanny, Linda, were the only women in our circle Sonny hadn't slept with," she wrote.

Sonny apparently blamed Cher for his infidelity, telling her: "I wouldn't have had to look outside our marriage if I was sexually satisfied."

But Cher herself also admitted to stepping outside the relationship. Towards the end of their marriage in the mid-1970s, Cher recalled sleeping with a guitarist. "I knew then that I would never have sex with Sonny again," she wrote.

Sonny was controlling.

Despite his own cheating habits, Sonny didn't like Cher talking to other men.

While Cher was filming the couple's second film, Chastity, she struck up a friendship with co-star Stephen Whittaker. It bugged Sonny so much that he re-wrote the script to remove all of their intimate scenes, she said.

In a separate incident, after a tennis lession, Sonny attended a party hosted by Cher's coach during which she said hello to some people in passing. Later, Cher's driver told Sonny he had seen the actress talking to other men.

"I had no idea that they'd spoken, but later that night I looked out of my bedroom window and spotted flames," Cher wrote.

"Peering closer, I saw that Sonny was stoking the incinerator in the backyard. When I realised he was burning my tennis clothes, I felt such a rush of anger and then complete hopelessness. I'd so enjoyed my lessons. I couldn't believe he was being so controlling. I felt utterly betrayed."

Cher also claimed that Sonny forbade the couple's band members and other employees from talking to her, and that she was banned from speaking to other men without her husband present.

Sonny once shoved Cher against a wall.

In one shocking account, Cher described a moment early in their relationship when Sonny physically manhandled her during an argument.

After Sonny had brought home a German Shepherd puppy, he shoved the dog aside with his foot so hard it yelped. Cher told him off, and she says he pushed her up against a wall.

"He didn't yell and he didn't hit me, but he had ahold of my shoulders and his face was clenched," Cher wrote in her memoir. "I was so vehemently opposed to being manhandled, having seen Mom go through it, that I thought, f**k this."

She told him, "If you ever touch me like this again, I will leave your ass and it'll be the last time you ever see me."

Cher faced mental health issues.

During the course of their marriage, Cher's mental health suffered due to her isolated social life and exhausting schedule.

In 1973, Sonny signed her up to see a therapist. In spite of patient confidentiality rules, the therapist relayed all of Cher's revelations to Sonny.

"I remember when I found out I screamed at Sonny, 'How could you do this?' and he didn't even have an answer," she wrote.

"Isn't that an extreme of betraying somebody's trust, having their therapist tell you everything they're saying? I was f**king furious. I felt violated, like I had been raped. It made me feel like I had before, as if there was no way to protect myself."

She was 26 when she reached breaking point. Sonny had lost interest and she was in a loveless marriage. Cher wrote that she contemplated taking her own life.

"I stepped barefoot onto the balcony of our suite and stared down. I was dizzy with loneliness."

It was thinking of her loved ones that stopped her.

"I don't have to jump off, I can just leave him," she thought.

Sonny took Cher's money.

According to Cher, Sonny took control of their finances, setting up their business structure so that she was essentially his underpaid employee through a company called Cher Enterprises.

She wrote, "He took all my money," explaining that at the time, she naively believed everything they earned was shared equally as husband and wife.

Reflecting on this, she lamented, "To this day, I wish to God I could just ask, 'Son, at what point, during what day, did you go, 'Yeah, you know what? I'm going to take her money.'"

Cher also described how this arrangement left her financially illiterate, admitting she didn't know how to write a check or manage a bank account until later in life, during her relationship with David Geffen.

Lucille Ball helped Cher leave Sonny.

After realising the contract she had signed gave the bulk of the ownership and profits from The Sonny & Cher Show to her husband, Cher called I Love Lucy actress Lucille Ball for advice. She had been in a similiar predicament with her husband, Desi Arnaz.

"I told her, 'Lucy, I want to leave Sonny and you're the only one I know that's ever been in this same situation. What should I do?'" she wrote.

Ball replied: "F**k him, you're the one with the talent."

Cher went on to secure the same lawyer as Ball, and Sonny and Cher officially divorced in 1975.