In a June interview with UK chat show host Graham Norton, Cher — born Cherilyn Sarkisian some 72 years ago — talked about the public reaction to her first dramatic role as an actress.

“It was terrible, actually,” she said. As she and her sister sat at a screening for another film, the trailer for 1983’s “Silkwood” was greeted with hoots of derisive laughter from the audience when Cher’s name appeared onscreen. “It was heartbreaking.”

Critics were left laughing out of the other side of their mouths when Cher — then just a former pop star and family variety show host — was nominated for an Oscar for her poignant, nuanced portrayal of nuclear whistleblower Karen Silkwood’s lesbian roommate, Dolly Pelliker.

She won a Golden Globe for that role and was nominated for a supporting actress Oscar. Later, she won an best actress Oscar for “Moonstruck” in 1986. (She’s also a Tony award away from an EGOT, having won an Emmy for her 2003 Farewell tour special and a Grammy for her 2000 single “Believe,” which having just mentioned it, you almost certainly will have it playing on a loop in your head for quote some time.) And this week, it was announced that she would receive the Kennedy Center Honors.

The lesson here, clearly, is not to sleep on Cher, an entertainer so durable and consistently excellent that we joke she’ll outlast human civilization. At the end of time, the saying goes, there will still be cockroaches and Cher.

Cher as a person is honest and salty and opinionated in all the right ways. She’s unabashedly LGBTQ positive and is the proud mom of trans activist Chaz Bono. I remember being startled one night during the Iraq War to hear her angrily calling in to C-SPAN to hold forth with real authority on the dangers posed to U.S. troops by their inadequate helmets and unarmored Humvees. (It perhaps goes without saying that her Twitter feed is as regular a delight as Carrie Fischer’s once was.)