Michelle Pfeiffer Reveals She Was In A Cult

Before Michelle Pfeiffer became a big screen star, the actress was a member of a group she refers to as a cult.

The 55-year-old actress opened up to The Sunday Telegraph’s Stella magazine about a group she met in Los Angeles during the ‘80s prior to her leap to fame, who believed in breatharianism – which is the ability to live without food and water.

The actress called the diet something “nobody can adhere to” and the group was “very controlling.”

Michelle said she was “saved” when she met first husband Peter Horton, who was casting a film about the Moonies, followers of Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church. While helping him research the role for the cult movie, she realized what was happening to her.

“I was in one,” she said, looking back. “We were talking with an ex-Moonie and he was describing the psychological manipulation and I just clicked.”

She first thought of the group as “kind of personal trainers.”

“They worked with weights and put people on diets. Their thing was vegetarianism,” she said in the interview. “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. I had to pay for all the time I was there, so it was financially very draining.”

The actress, who split from Horton in 1988, did not reveal how she was able to split from the group.

— Jesse Spero