Hollywood star was pushed to quit acting after marrying cult leader’s son
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Bethany Joy Lenz was a household name in the early 2000s due to her starring role on the CW’s “One Tree Hill.” At the same time, she was unknowingly a member of a cult.
In 2023, the actress shared on her podcast with former “One Tree Hill” castmates Sophia Bush and Hilarie Burton that she’d harbored that secret from the public for around a decade.
“There’s a lot to tell,” she said at the time. Given the public’s interest, she decided to write a book about her experience, “Dinner for Vampires,” out later this month.
In a new interview ahead of its release, the actress, now 43, shared how the entire group, including her former husband, the cult leader’s son. pressured her to quit acting.
“I was so far along in my submission and abdication to this group. … And the thing was, that it was disguised as submission to God,” she said on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast Wednesday. “From that place, everything about my career started to then funnel though the group because I didn’t trust my own instinct to know if I was on the right path or taking the right job.”
On studios’ radar due to the success of her television series, Lenz explained she had more acting opportunities.
“I was cast as Belle in ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and gave that up at the advice — the heavy-handed advice — of ‘Les,'” whom she identifies as the cult leader in her book.
“There were some really big movies that I was on a short list for, auditioned for, was pinned for and then I had to call my agent and be like, ‘You know what, I actually don’t want to do this. I don’t want to continue auditioning for this.”
Lenz said it was all about control.
“The more that I worked, the less they would see me. The more that I worked, the more confidence I would be gaining in my abilities and my creativity,” Lenz recalled.
Content retrieved from: https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/hollywood-star-pushed-quit-acting-after-marrying-cult-leaders-son.
