Just before production officially commenced on Silkwood, the cast and crew traveled to Texas for the location shoot.

Cher was nervous about meeting Meryl Streep for the first time. "I thought it was going to be like having an audience with the Pope," she said. Streep, however, immediately put her at ease. "The first day on location," Cher told People magazine, "Meryl just came up, threw her arms around me and said, 'I'm so glad you're here.' She's all communication and warmth and friendship with a great sense of humor."

On meeting Cher for the first time, Meryl Streep said, "I was already in the mindset of 'My friend is coming, I have somebody on my side.'" In a 1983 interview Streep said that there was some awkwardness between them in the beginning, but it quickly dissipated. "We had to get used to each other. Accept each other. On my side, I was thinking, Cher! You know, from 'I Got You, Babe' and all those other records I bought. She, on the other hand, apparently had an image of me as sitting at the right hand of Dame Edith Sitwell. I think she was intimidated by my rep."

One of the first major tasks that Cher had to tackle when she arrived on location was to find the right look for her character Dolly. In the beginning, according to Cher, Dolly was written as a "glamorous barrel rider." They tried a screen test of Cher with that look, but Mike Nichols didn't like it. Nichols told Cher to wash her face, then wash her hair and let it dry flat to her head without doing anything to it. Then he and costume designer Ann Roth began to dress her in dowdy clothes, working hard to strip every trace of glamour from the usually picture perfect star. "They were just merciless with me, until I had on some horrible men's bowling shirt and awful chino pants, with two pairs of jockey shorts underneath to make me look heavier," said Cher. "When I stepped out in my new costume, Kurt Russell said, 'What the f*ck are you supposed to be?' I ran in tears to the back bathroom, which had the only mirror in the house. And I cried my eyes out."

De-glamorizing herself was difficult for Cher, who had made her career on a trademark style of being dressed to the over-the-top nines. "But I was looking at the big picture," she said. "Everyone was trying not to laugh and not doing a very good job of it. Mike was looking really pleased. 'That's perfect,' he said. I couldn't believe it. My first real time in front of a camera in a big film, and this was the way I had to look?"

Cher was warned not to wear any makeup at all. "Mike would give me the white-glove test," said Cher. "He'd run his finger across my cheek, to make sure I hadn't snuck on a touch of something. Once I tried to cheat and curled my eyelashes, and Mike said, 'Don't do it again, my dear.' He said it sweetly, but I got the message."

Eventually, however, Cher grew comfortable with her character. "I gave up and got into the spirit of the game," she said. "I thought of Dolly as one of those women who works in a stable. She has no preoccupation with her physical self, her hair, or her makeup. She's kind of funny, but she doesn't know it; she's a female version of a good ol' boy. Before long it became a godsend not to have to worry about how I looked. My whole life I had been consumed with my appearance, but now I was free of it, like a child is free."

Cher's comfort with playing Dolly was helped tremendously by Meryl Streep taking the time to put her at ease. The two women formed a fast friendship and soon were inseparable during the film's down time. "We hung out and drank plum wine-eww-after work," Streep told Vanity Fair in 2010. "Cher was really fun. I was smitten by her openness, both as an actress and as a person...For a showgirl, there's not a phony bone in her body."

When they hung out together, according to Cher, they talked mostly "about our kids, music people, where we wanted to live, what I wanted to do when I grew up. Meryl," she said, "couldn't care less what she wears. I'd tease her about that and she'd tell me to shut up. And she did her own ironing, which drove me insane. She says it keeps her down to earth. I don't know what keeps me down to earth, but it isn't ironing. I send my stuff out."

Streep's friendship with Cher helped create a fun mood on the set in the midst of making such a serious film. "They would do actress shtick," recalled Nora Ephron, "voices, fake fights, jokes. They were hysterically funny together." Ephron added, "I can't overestimate how that friendship made it possible for Cher not to be wildly nervous."

The actresses also got along well with co-star Kurt Russell, whom Cher described as "like a bossy big brother" that she adored. Russell said that working with Streep was "one of the highlights of my career. She gives so much in a scene that it's hard to keep up with her."

Cher agreed. "There is no one more generous than Meryl when she's acting with you," she said. "She has a truly collaborative spirit, which creates a great atmosphere on the set. I knew that she wanted me to be as good in our scenes in Silkwood as she was-that's such an important attitude. I try to live up to her example."

The one scene in Silkwood that was particularly difficult for Meryl Streep was the one in which Karen flashes her breast to her coworkers while on the job. It was a scene that was "very awkward," she said, "because I'm always so sensitive about women doing nude scenes. It's a personal gripe. I did it because, in context, I thought she probably would do something like that. It made sense. But it's still a completely bizarre and horrible thing to do in front of a crew."

As far as Mike Nichols was concerned, he had the affection and respect of everyone on the set. "[He] never told you how to act; he'd play little tricks on you instead," said Cher. In her book The First Time she describes an example when she and Meryl Streep were preparing for an emotional scene on the porch following a brutal fight that their characters have. "The two of us were just sitting there one day, waiting for lighting. And Mike started telling us this terribly sad story about the real Karen Silkwood, when she was sick and completely isolated and alone. Mike is one of the great storytellers of all time, and he made this story so sad that tears were starting to well up in his eyes. He made it so gut-wrenching that Meryl and I were starting to cry ourselves. Then Mike said, 'Action!' He is definitely the best of the best."

When the film was in post-production, Nichols and editor Sam O'Steen ran into a problem regarding the way Karen's death was depicted. Kerr-McGee, the company Silkwood worked for, threatened legal action against the film if anything was portrayed that was not 100 per cent factual. As O'Steen tells it in his 2001 book Cut to the Chase, Karen, in the original cut, left the union meeting in the coffee shop with another friend following her out to give her the papers she had left behind that she intended to share with the New York Times reporter she was meeting afterwards. "Silkwood said goodbye to her friend, got into her car then started it," said O'Steen. "The moment she pulled into traffic, the headlights blinked on in the car parked behind her. This was an 'oh, oh' moment. But I had to take that out, the shot of the lights blinking on. Now all you see is a time jump, where she's driving at night and sees headlights from the car behind her in her rearview mirror. The next shot is of her wrecked car. So in the final cut it wasn't as clear that someone was following her."

In fact, a disclaimer had to be added at the end that made it clear that Karen's death had been ruled a single-car accident and that traces of a tranquilizer and alcohol had been found in her system. Plus, it added, no one knew for sure if Karen had been carrying documents for the New York Times reporter when she left the coffee shop that night. "Mike was upset about it," said O'Steen, "but there was nothing he could do. He did consult with a heavyweight lawyer at one point to see what he could get away with."

Ultimately, Nichols and O'Steen decided that the ending showing Karen's friends in the coffee shop watching her smashed car being towed away was too depressing. "...we wanted the end to be more upbeat and we wanted to end up on Meryl," said O'Steen. "It was her movie, so after the coffee shop scene we cut to a slow-motion version of the last time Meryl said goodbye to Kurt Russell, where they smiled at each other, and she drove off. We were limited by what we could do, but flashing back to Kurt and Meryl being in love, made the ending less of a downer-we didn't want to just end on her gravesite. Also, her singing 'Amazing Grace' over those shots added something."

As Nichols prepared for the film's release, he wondered if the public would be interested in a film like Silkwood. Streep wondered the same thing, saying, "I'm not sure people are going to want to see this movie. They may stay away from something that smells like a message."

Cher worried about how her performance would be received. Silkwood could make or break her acting career. Before the film opened, Mike Nichols called her and told her that the trailer for the film was playing at a nearby theater in Los Angeles if she wanted to check it out. She went to the theater and waited for the trailer to come on in front of a full house there to watch a Tom Cruise film. "Meryl Streep's name came up on the screen, and everyone went, 'Oohh...'" recalled Cher. "Kurt Russell. 'Ahhhh...' And then 'Cher' came up-and everyone in the theater started laughing...I detached myself from the laughter. I refused to take it personally...But deep inside, I cracked and broke into a million pieces, like the coyote in the Road Runner cartoons."

When Silkwood opened in December 1983, there was some controversy attached to it over the sensitive and politically charged subject matter. It was a tough sell to mainstream moviegoers. To everyone's relief, however, it had no trouble finding a broad audience fueled by strong reviews and good word of mouth.

Streep received her usual raves, and most reviewers couldn't get over Cher's remarkable dramatic turn as an actress. Streep was thrilled at her new friend's acceptance. "It's surprising, not that she can perform," said Streep of Cher, "but that she's as good as she is. Here's a woman who's been performing for 20 years. She's intelligent, of course she can act. But she's so wonderful in this role that's nothing like her!"

When Karen Silkwood's real-life boyfriend at the time, Drew Stephens, saw the film, he was very moved. "It was magic," he told People magazine. "It makes a human being out of Karen instead of a myth."

The only ones vocally unhappy with the final film were Karen's parents and former roommate Sherri Ellis. Her father believed that Karen was "a whole lot smarter than they showed in the movie," while Ellis objected to Cher's depiction of Dolly, even though it wasn't based expressly on her. "It really spun my head," Ellis told People when asked about the film. "The upsetting thing is the insinuation to I could have snitched on Karen to the company. But I sold the producers of the film the character portrayal rights, and for $67,500 they can defame my character any way they want."

Silkwood went on to earn five Academy Award nominations for Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Director, Best Editing and Best Original Screenplay. Unfortunately, it failed to take home any that year.

The success of the film had many lasting effects on the people who were involved with it. It helped firmly establish Nora Ephron in the film industry as she went on to become one of Hollywood's most sought after screenwriters and directors. It put director Mike Nichols back at the top of his game following an eight year absence from feature films, and it left no doubt in anyone's mind that Cher was indeed a good actress capable of doing much more than her flashy Las Vegas stage shows. It jump-started Cher's movie career, which thrived throughout the 1980s and 90s, complete with a Best Actress Academy Award win for Moonstruck (1987) just a few years later.

Playing Karen Silkwood left a lasting impression on Meryl Streep. "I get very creepy feelings if I think about it," she said in 1983. "My heart breaks for her. She was only twenty-eight...when she died, and it was a real waste. I'm really glad I got the chance to try to step into her shoes for awhile...Karen Silkwood has come to stand for so many things to so many people that I had to start all over again in trying to play her as a person, not a symbol. I really don't think we can know much about people after they're not there to tell us. All their real, real secrets die with them. At the end of this whole experience of making this movie, I thought about those minutes before Karen's car went off the road, and I missed her."

Streep also gained respect for the political ramifications surrounding the film. "It really made me think about life in a small town where there's one industry-how easy it is for me to say, 'Let's close that down,' but how people are worrying about their jobs and their kids and just hoping for the best, even in their boss; that if there were something dangerous, the company would fix it. So, in fact, it gave me a better understanding of another side of the story."

by Andrea Passafiume