70s Rock Legend Played by Dakota Fanning Still Platinum Blonde at 65 – Who Is She?

A beloved rock singer from the 1970s was still the image of freewheeling punk style when she surfaced recently in Los Angeles.

She shot to fame as a teenager as the lead singer of a girl group that came up in Los Angeles but achieved its greatest fame abroad.

Her brunette bandmate developed a reputation as the ‘Godmother of Punk,’ performing a celebrated smash hit cover of I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Meanwhile, the blonde songstress who was sighted in sunny California this month went on to form a musical double-act with her twin sister.

When a movie was eventually made about the band that propelled her to stardom, she was portrayed by none other than Dakota Fanning.

During her latest sighting, now aged 65, she still had the platinum locks she sported when she first shot to fame – but can you guess who she is?

A beloved rock singer from the 1970s was still the image of freewheeling punk style when she surfaced recently in Los Angeles 

The singer in question is none other than Cherie Currie, lead singer of the classic 1970s all-female rock band The Runaways. 

Born in the San Fernando Valley of ‘Valley girl’ fame, Cherie grew up on the fringes of Hollywood as the daughter of the little-known 1940s actress Marie Harmon.

She and her twin sister Marie Currie were themselves working in showbiz from childhood, dancing background on American Bandstand.

Cherie suffered through a traumatic childhood, during which she was allegedly raped and her mother ran off to Indonesia for the sake of a love affair. 

When she was 15, Cherie struck out independently of her family to become the lead singer of the new rock band The Runaways in 1975.

The Runaways burst onto the scene with the single Cherry Bomb, which combined the era’s rambunctious teenage rebellion with a touch of girlish coquetry as Cherie sneered: ‘Hello Daddy, hello Mom, I’m your ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb!’

Although the Runaways never became a major success at home in America, they found a more enthusiastic fanbase in Japan, as well as to a lesser extent in Europe.

Now regarded as a forerunner of punk, the band included Joan Jett, who in her post-Runaways years sang a cover of I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll that gave it worldwide popularity.

The singer in question is none other than Cherie Currie, lead singer of the classic 1970s all-female rock band The Runaways; Cherie pictured 1976

She shot to fame as a teenager as the lead singer of a girl group that came up in Los Angeles but achieved its greatest fame abroad

Born in the San Fernando Valley of ‘Valley girl’ fame, Cherie grew up on the fringes of Hollywood as the daughter of the little-known 1940s actress Marie Harmon

Cherie fronted the band with fiery brio, thundering onstage in a corset and bellowing into the microphone while projecting a tempestuous persona that hinted at the turmoil brewing behind the scenes.

She alleges that the band’s manager Kim Fowley pitted the members against each other, and one of her bandmates Jackie Fox even claimed to have been raped by Kim while unconscious in front of Cherie and Joan, though Cherie denies seeing as much.

‘All I can say,’ Cherie told Pitchfork: ‘is if Joan, Sandy and I saw an unconscious girl being brutally raped in front of us, we would have hit him over the head with a chair.’

During her time as one of the Runaways, Cherie herself battled a galloping drug addiction, vigorously abusing cocaine and Quaaludes. 

At the height of her substance abuse, Cherie left the band at 17 in 1977, two years before the Runaways fell apart for good over artistic disagreements.

The year the group broke up, Cherie – now long gone from the Runaways – was abducted and raped by a man who had murdered six female victims before he stalked and apprehended the rocker, according to the Guardian. 

She kept working after the Runaways, recoding a 1978 solo album called Beauty’s Only Skin Deep and the 1980 duets album Messin’ with the Boys with her twin sister.

Cherie even broke into films, acting with Jodie Foster and Scott Baio in Foxes, the 1980 directorial debut of Adrian Lyne, who went on to make such memorable movies as Flashdance, Fatal Attraction, Unfaithful, 9 1/2 Weeks and Indecent Proposal.

During the 1980s, she finally kicked her drug habit, and eventually became a counselor at the substance abuse wing of a Los Angeles hospital.

Cherie is pictured in 1977 performing with her bandmate Joan Jett (left), who in her post-Runaways years sang a cover of I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll that gave it worldwide popularity

The legacy of her band lived on in the form of the 2010 biopic the Runaways, in which Kristen Stewart (right) played Joan Jett and Dakota Fanning (left) played Cherie

‘I was only 25 and a lot of these kids were the age I was when I was in the Runaways when I was introduced to drugs, so it was a good fit for me,’ she recalled.

Cherie conquered her pain so thoroughly that when Kim Fowley was dying of bladder cancer, she took care of him, their old bad blood notwithstanding.

‘With Kim in particular, I really turned that around. Instead of dealing with the anger and resentment and even the hatred I had against him, I decided that that only hurt me,’ she said, noting he ‘didn’t’ run the band ‘right’ but adding that he ‘came from an orphanage. He had gone through polio, with no parental guidance of any kind.’

Looking after him during his final decline was ‘the end of a nightmare’ for Cherie. ‘I’m so grateful for that time. People can change. They can.’

She noted: ‘Without him, Joan never would have happened, Lita [Ford] and myself, so I owe him a great deal and I was very honored to take care of him towards the end of his life. I would have done it again and again, and I’m sorry that I lost him.’

In more recent years, she has become a chainsaw woodcarving artist with a gallery in Chatsworth – part of her native San Fernando Valley in the Los Angeles suburbs.

The legacy of her band lived on in the form of the 2010 biopic the Runaways, in which Kristen Stewart played Joan Jett and Dakota Fanning played Cherie.