Celebrities Who Spent Their Childhood in Cults – SheKnows

Although the concept of a cult, which we define as a small group with a self-appointed leader who controls its members, may sound alien and cinematic to many, surprisingly the idea is quite familiar to many of our favorite stars. Although many celebrities have been rumored to have ties to cults over the years, many others have spoken openly about their first-hand experiences.

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Oscar-nominated actress Glenn Close, for example, was part of a cult called Moral Re-Armament from the age of seven to the age of 22. “When you talk to someone who has been in a group, it basically dictates how you should live and what you should say and how you should feel, from age 7 to age 22 it has a profound influence on you ” she once told The Hollywood Reporter.

Interestingly, Close is not the only celebrity who spent his childhood in a cult. Some other notable stars include Patricia Arquette, Rose McGowan and Joaquin Phoenix. To learn more about their experiences and how they eventually found their way out, scroll below!

• Patricia Arquette

  
  Photo credit: Michael Buckner/Variety via Getty Images

  Oscar winner Patricia Arquette not only grew up in the Skymont Subud cult in Virginia, but her parents were also the founders of the cult. The so-called “spiritual movement” was known for denying access to toilets, electricity or running water in the name of “inner guidance”.

  While still living with her family, she and her family left the community to return to a more conventional life. However, according to ABC, the Arquette family wasn’t doing any better at the time. “There was a lot of drama in the house,” Arquette said in an interview with Oprah Winfrey. “There were a lot of chairs flying around.”

• David Arquette

  
  Photo credit: Mark Von Holden/Variety/Penske Media via Getty Images

  Like Patricia, her brother David Arquette was also a young member of the community. “They started with a few friends and wanted to build this utopian society, so to speak,” Patricia told Winfrey, according to ABC. “David was born there.”

• Joaquin Phoenix

  
  Photo credit: Michael Buckner/Variety via Getty Images

  Joaquin Phoenix grew up with his siblings River, Rain, Liberty and Summer in Children of God, a group that has long made its members give up their money and contact with the outside world.

  In a previous interview with Playboy via Marie Claire, Joaquin revealed that his parents left him when he was just four years old. “I think my parents thought they had found a community that shared their ideals,” the Oscar winner told the outlet. “Cults rarely advertise themselves as such. “Usually someone says, ‘We’re like-minded people.’ ‘It’s a community,’ but I think when my parents realized there was more to it, they dropped out.”

• Rose McGowan

  
  Photo credit: Swan Gallet/`/Penske Media via Getty Images

  Another celebrity who grew up in the Children of God group was Rose McGowan. In McGowan’s memoir Brave, she detailed how she began distancing herself at age nine and saw how the women were treated.

  “I remember seeing like that [cult’s] Men were with women and I decided at a young age that I didn’t want to be like those women,” she revealed. “They were basically there to serve men sexually – you were allowed to have more than one wife.”

  “My father and I escaped in the middle of the night with my father’s other wife,” she recalled. “I remember running through a cornfield with thunder and lightning, holding my father’s hand and running as fast as I could to keep up with him…[The cult] sent people to find us. I remember a man trying to break in with a hammer.”

• Glenn Close

  
  Photo credit: Michael Buckner/Variety via Getty Images

  When she was just seven years old, young Glenn Close and her family joined the Moral Re-Armament movement, a group founded in the 1930s that was known for its belief that the world could avoid war if people adopted moral principles and experience spiritual awakening.

  “You weren’t actually allowed to do anything, or you had unnatural desires imposed on you that made you feel guilty,” she told Hollywood Reporter. “When you talk to someone who’s been in a group, it basically dictates how you should live, what you should say, and how you should feel, from the time you’re seven until the next year you’re older. to 22, it has a profound impact on you. It’s something you have to do [consciously overcome] Because all of your trigger points are.”

  As it turned out, Close left the group only after many years, at the age of 22, when she started going to college.

• Winona Ryder

  
  Photo credit: Rob Latour/Variety/Penske Media via Getty Images

  When she was just seven years old, Stranger Things star Winona Ryder moved to a commune in Northern California with six other families. “The place where we lived was 380 acres of redwoods,” she told Parade about the time. “It was wonderful.”

  Four years later, when she was just 11 years old, her family moved to Petaluma, California.