Celebrities Who Spent Their Childhood in Cults
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Although the concept of a cult, which we’re defining as any small group with a self-appointed leader who controls its members, can sound foreign and movie-worthy to many, the idea is surprisingly quite familiar to many of our favorite celebrities. In fact, though many celebrities have been rumored to have cult connections over the years, many others have been open about their experiences first-hand.
Oscar-nominated actress Glenn Close, for example, was part of a cult called the Moral Re-Armament, from the young age of 7 all the way up to 22. “If you talk to anybody who was in a group that basically dictates how you’re supposed to live and what you’re supposed to say and how you’re supposed to feel, from the time you’re 7 till the time you’re 22, it has a profound impact on you,” she once told The Hollywood Reporter.
Interestingly enough, however, Close isn’t the only celebrity who spent their childhood in a cult. Some other notable stars include Patricia Arquette, Rose McGowan and Joaquin Phoenix. To find out more about their experiences, and how they eventually made their way out, scroll below!
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Patricia Arquette
Oscar winner Patricia Arquette wasn’t just raised in Virginia’s Skymont Subud cult, but her parents were the founders of it. The so-called “spiritual movement” was known for not allowing access to bathrooms, electricity, or running water in the name of “inner guidance.”
While still living with her family, she and her family left the commune to return to a more conventional life. Per ABC, however, the Arquette family wasn’t any better at that time either. “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
Much like Patricia, her brother David Arquette was also a young member of the community. “They started it with a bunch of their friends, and they wanted to kind of build this utopian society,” Patricia told Winfrey, per ABC. “David was born there.”
Joaquin Phoenix
Joaquin Phoenix, along with his siblings River, Rain, Liberty, and Summer, was raised in Children of God, which is a group with an extensive history of making members give up their money and contact with the outside world.
In a previous interview with Playboy per Marie Claire, Joaquin revealed his parents left when he was just four years old. “I think my parents thought they’d found a community that shared their ideals,” the Oscar winner told the outlet. “Cults rarely advertise themselves as such. It’s usually someone saying, ‘We’re like-minded people. This is a community,’ but I think the moment my parents realized there was something more to it, they got out.”
Rose McGowan
Another celebrity who grew up in the Children of God group was Rose McGowan. In McGowan’s memoir Brave, she detailed how she started to separate herself from it when she was nine and saw how the women were treated.
“I remember watching how the [cult’s] men were with the women, and at a very early age, I decided I did not want to be like those women,” she revealed. “They were basically there to serve the men sexually—you were allowed to have more than one wife.”
“My dad and I escaped with my dad’s other wife in the middle of the night,” she remembered. “I remember running through a cornfield in thunder and lightning, holding my dad’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
At just seven years old, a young Glenn Close and her family entered the movement Moral Re-Armament, a group founded in the 1930s known for its belief that the world could avoid war if people experienced a moral and spiritual awakening.
“You basically weren’t allowed to do anything, or you were made to feel guilty about any unnatural desire,” she told Hollywood Reporter. “If you talk to anybody who was in a group that basically dictates how you’re supposed to live and what you’re supposed to say and how you’re supposed to feel, from the time you’re 7 till the time you’re 22, it has a profound impact on you. It’s something you have to [consciously overcome] because all of your trigger points are.”
As it turns out, Close only left the group after many years at age 22 when she started going to college.
Winona Ryder
When she was just 7 years old, Stranger Things star Winona Ryder moved to a commune in Northern California with six other families. “The place we lived at was 380 acres of redwoods,” she told Parade about the time. “It was beautiful.”
Four years later, when she was just 11 years old, her family moved away to Petaluma, California.
Angel Haze
Rapper and singer Angel Haze says that they grew up in a strict religious community, the Pentecostal Greater Apostolic Faith, that they now consider a cult.
“We all lived in the same community, within 10 minutes of each other,” they told The Guardian in 2012. “You weren’t allowed to talk to anyone outside of that, you weren’t allowed to wear jewellery, listen to music, to eat certain things, to date people … you weren’t allowed to do pretty much anything. Church was on Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays.”
Christopher Owens
Former Girls frontman Christopher Owens was also born into the Children of God cult. He told The Guardian in 2011: “Imagine being raised in the Taliban.”
“Being told everybody else in the world is bad, rejecting technology, rejecting medical research, being devoted to God and believing America was evil and the end of the world was coming: all the same principles.”
