Michelle Pfeiffer: I Was in a Cult

'Very controlling' couple believed in 'breatharianism'
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 4, 2013 2:45 PM CST
Michelle Pfeiffer: I Was in a Cult
Michelle Pfeiffer attends the world premiere of "The Family" on Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2013 in New York.   (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)

Before she became famous, Michelle Pfeiffer met a "very controlling" couple who became "kind of personal trainers" for her ... until she realized she was actually in a cult. The couple "believed that people in their highest state were breatharian," meaning they could live without food or water, Pfeiffer tells the Telegraph, and they put her on an impossible diet. "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," she says.

When she met Peter Horton, who would become her first husband, he was researching for a role in a film about the followers of Rev. Moon Sun-myung’s Unification Church, known as Moonies. While helping him research "this cult," Pfeiffer says, she realized she herself "was in one." "We were talking with an ex-Moonie and he was describing the psychological manipulation and I just clicked," she adds. (More Michelle Pfeiffer stories.)

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