These actors are speaking out about their time spent in cults.
Many of these stars were children when they were a part of these cults; later in life they were able to reflect on their experiences, and share what went into their eventual escape. And each of them have approached their disclosures in their ownw ays; for Bethany Joy Lenz it has come in the form of her new book Dinner for Vampires Life on a Cult TV Show (While also in an Actual Cult!) while Glenn Close opened up about it on an episode of The Me You Can’t See.
Read on to learn more about the hardships endured, and what it took to break out.
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Bethany Joy Lenz
While starring as Haley James Scott on One Tree Hill from 2003-2012, Bethany Joy Lenz was also part of a small, ultra-Christian group led by a pastor in Idaho who would come to control much of her life, including her career and eventually her bank account. She opens up about the whole story in her new book, Dinner for Vampires Life on a Cult TV Show (While also in an Actual Cult!) .
“I don’t think of it as brave,” she told PEOPLE about her decision to share. “I think of it as important. Living silently in the suffering I experienced, I don’t know if that helps anyone.”
Lenz tells PEOPLE that though her OTH castmates expressed concern, she denied anything was wrong.
“I was like, ‘No, no, no. Cults are weird,” she recalls telling Craig Sheffer when he asked ifs he was in one, adding. “Cults are people in robes chanting crazy things and drinking Kool-Aid. That’s not what we do!'”
She ended up marrying a fellow “family” member and the two welcomed a daughter together; in 2012, though, she realized she needed to leave both her marriage and the group.
After a decade in the group, which cost her millions in income from the hit TV show, she left. In the years since, she has undergone a decade of recovery.
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Joaquin Phoenix
When Glenn Close was just 7 years old, her father, Dr. William Taliaferro Close, joined a conservative religious group, Moral Re-Armament.
Her father moved the family to the group’s headquarters in Switzerland where they lived for 15 years.
“It was basically a cult,” Close said in an episode of the Apple TV+ series The Me You Can’t See. “Everybody spouted the same things and there was a lot of rules, a lot of control. It was really awful.”
Her time in the cult had lasting impact on her ability to make relationships with others as left her “psychologically traumatized.”
“Because of the devastation, emotional and psychological of the cult, I have not been successful in my relationships and finding a permanent partner and I am sorry about that,” she said. “I think it is our natural state to be connected like that. I don’t think you ever change your trigger points, but at least you can be aware of them and maybe avoid situations that might make you vulnerable, especially in relationships.”
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Michelle Pfeiffer
After moving to L.A. at 20 years old, Michelle Pfeiffer met a “very controlling” couple who were “kind of personal trainers” who believed in breatharianism — the notion that people can live without food or water, she told The Sunday Telegraph‘s Stella magazine (per CBS News.)
“They were very controlling. I wasn’t living with them but I was there a lot and they were always telling me I needed to come more,” she said. “I had to pay for all the time I was there, so it was financially very draining.”
Pfeiffer would later realize something wasn’t right while helping her first husband, Peter Horton, research for a movie about the Moonies (people who follow the Unification Church). Her research into another cult-like group led to the realization that “I was in one.”
“We were talking with an ex-Moonie and he was describing the psychological manipulation and I just clicked,” she said.
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India Oxenberg
India Oxenberg lived under the NXIVM cult for seven years before she escaped with the help of her mother, actress Catherine Oxenberg. During that time she was endured physical and mental abuse that included branding, forced sex and starvation.
“I used exercise to punish myself: ‘I ate a lot, so now I have to walk 20 miles’, ” she told PEOPLE.
As part of Smallville actress Allison Mack’s role as a NXIVM leader, she used to direct Oxenberg to weigh herself and report every calorie she consumed. Mack was later convicted of racketeering and conspiracy and served two years in federal prison.
Source: People
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