Five celebrities affiliated to a cult

A few days ago, Lizzo was accused of sexual harassment by three former dancers from her dance team. The accusation quickly sparked outrage on the web, but one particular element made the situation even darker: it appears that the head of the star's dance squad, Shirlene Quigley, attempted to convert the dancers to her cult, subjected them to religious pressures, and engaged in inappropriate discussions about sexual matters. This wouldn't be the first time an international celebrity is entangled in a cult or associated with its promoters: Tom Cruise and John Travolta are part of Scientology, Madonna follows Kabbalah, and the major monotheistic religions are just a part of the diverse religious landscape in the United States. With a population of over 331 million inhabitants, 450,000 churches are shared among 224 million faithful. Setting aside Illuminati, Freemasonry, and black magic, here are 5 stories of celebrities who founded or were part of a sect.

Jared Leto

In 2019, Jared Leto and his band, Thirty Seconds to Mars, created a true cult. The band invited fans - who call themselves Echelon - to a retreat in Croatia for a three-day paid music festival complete with yoga sessions and film screenings. The band tweeted photos of Leto leading hundreds of people, all dressed in white, with the caption "Yes, this is a cult #MarsIsland," partly as a provocative response to journalists who criticized the band's extreme fandom.

Michelle Pfeiffer

Before playing the role of Elvira Hancock in Scarface, Michelle Pfeiffer was a young actress navigating the Hollywood scene. At the age of twenty, she briefly found herself involved in a breatharianism sect, whose members claimed they could survive without eating and only nourish themselves through "breathing." In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, the actress recounted meeting a couple of personal trainers in Los Angeles: «They worked with weights and put people on diets. Their specialty was vegetarianism. They were very authoritarian. I didn't live with them, but I was often there, and they always told me I had to come more often. I had to pay for all the time I was with them, so it was financially very draining. They believed that people in their highest state were breatharians.» However, shortly after Pfeiffer met her first husband, actor Peter Horton, he was cast in a film about the Moonies, a nickname for the followers of Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church in South Korea. While researching this cult, she realized she was part of a sect herself.

Winona Ryder

In 1978, at the age of 7, Winona Ryder moved with her parents, both writers and her younger brother to the Rainbow commune in California. Seven other families joined them, all seeking a self-sufficient life on a 300-acre property. Without electricity or television, Ryder became an avid reader and soon became interested in acting. The hobby turned into a career a few years later when her family moved to LA, and Winona Ryder started seriously auditioning. While recognizing that her childhood was unconventional, the actress remembered those years fondly in various interviews: «The place we lived in was 380 acres of sequoias. It was beautiful» she told Parade.

Joaquin Phoenix

Phoenix's parents met when his mother was hitchhiking in California. The couple, along with their children River, Rain, Liberty, and Summer, soon joined the Children of God, now known as The Family International, a cult that promoted spiritual reform founded in 1968 in Huntington Beach, California, by David Brandt Berg. Phoenix spent his childhood traveling through South America as a missionary for the Children of God. But around 1974, things became extremely problematic due to a form of evangelical preaching called "flirty fishing" in which cult women, or "fishers", persuaded men, or "fish" to join the community and contribute with a charitable donation through sexual intimacy. This practice was a primary source of financial income and a peak in memberships, as over ten thousand children were born from these encounters. Phoenix and his family returned to the United States in 1978 and settled in Florida.

Allison Mack

In 2018, the Smallville actress was accused of recruiting women to be subjected to sexual slavery on behalf of Keith Raniere and branding them with the initials "KR" as an initiation ritual. Mack had been part of the NXIVM cult for years, officially registered as a company selling self-help courses founded by the leader Raniere, an entrepreneur also accused of sexual violence, pedophilia, racketeering, inducing prostitution, child prostitution, forced labor exploitation, extortion, obstruction of justice, and distributing child pornography.