Glenn Close Opens Up About Growing Up In A Cult

Actress Glenn Close has opened up about her upbringing, growing up in a conservative religious cult and how she broke away aged 22.

The star of ‘Fatal Attraction’ – and more recently ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ – lived in the Moral Re-Armament group from the age of seven.

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Her father, William Taliaferro Close, was a medical doctor and moved the family to live in the organisation’s communal centres.

The family eventually went to live to the organisation’s HQ in Switzerland.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, she said: “[For years], I wouldn’t trust any of my instincts because [my beliefs] had all been dictated to me.

“You basically weren’t allowed to do anything, or you were made to feel guilty about any unnatural desire.

“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 seven 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 [wrong].”

Close eventually broke away from the cult in 1970, leaving to study theatre and anthropology at the College of William & Mary in Virginia.

“Many things led me to leave,” she said. “I had no toolbox to leave, but I did it… I’m not going to go into [the details of leaving]. You can’t in an interview.”

But she says that the experience may have been a positive one as far as her acting was concerned.

“I always felt that I was held together with Scotch tape and paper clips, and, as an actor, that’s good,” she added.

She has now forgiven her father for her upbringing, however.

“I always thought, the way life works, the burden of forgiveness is on the child,” she said.

By 1974, she had begun her stage career, landing her first movie role in 1979.

She’s now a six-time Oscar nominee, tying her with Deborah Kerr and Thelma Ritter as the actress with the most nominations never to have won.

Image credits: Reuters/THR/Rex

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