How “One Tree Hill” Star Bethany Joy Lenz Got Lured Into a Cult for a Decade— and How She Got Out of It (Exclusive)
The actress details the years she spent devoted to a high-control religious group and how she hopes to help others in similar positions
In the early 2000s, actress Bethany Joy Lenz was enjoying life as one of the stars of One Tree Hill, the popular teen drama that also starred Sophia Bush, Chad Michael Murray, and Hilarie Burton.
But throughout filming, she tells PEOPLE, she led a double life: At the same time, she was also deeply devoted to a small, ultra-Christian group led by a shady pastor in Idaho, who controlled her career, life choices and, eventually, her bank account.
By the time she got out a decade later, she had to start over with hardly anything to show for the nearly nine years she spent on the series — and a feeling of regret and shame for not realizing she was in a cult.
In her memoir Dinner for Vampires Life on a Cult TV Show (While also in an Actual Cult!) (out Oct. 22), Lenz tells the whole story for the first time.
"I don't think of it as brave," she says, of why she's finally opening up. "I think of it as important. Living silently in the suffering I experienced, I don't know if that helps anyone." She hopes her book will empower others in similar situations: "I think of this more as the right thing to do."
Lenz first met the pastor through a bible study she'd joined when she moved to L.A. at 20 to further her acting career.
"I had always been looking for a place to belong," she explains. She'd grown up an Evangelical Christian, the only child of parents who married young and moved around a lot before divorcing when Lenz was 16. Acting and her church group were her anchors and a great way to meet like-minded people.
At first, she loved her bible study. They'd sing, worship and have philosophical conversations about God and life's meaning. Finding that group felt like "water in a desert" to the young actress, who says she had never before had that kind of connection.
"We crave that kind of intimacy," she says. "The idea that someone out there says, 'No matter what you do or how badly you might behave or what dumb choices you make, I still love you, and I'm here for you.'”
When a visiting pastor she calls "Les" began to come to the study nights and lead the conversations, she didn't think there was anything strange about it — even when he convinced others to move to a "Big House" in Idaho to live in a small, commune-like environment.
"It still looked normal," Lenz says. "And then it just morphed. But by the time it started morphing, I was too far into the relationships to notice.” She adds, "Plus, I was so young."
She says the fact that she was in a cult wasn't lost on her One Tree Hill costars.
Related: The Cast of 'One Tree Hill': Where Are They Now?
"I could see it on their faces," she says of their reactions. "But I'd justify it, like, 'I couldn't possibly be in a cult. It's just that I've got access to a relationship with God and people in a way that everybody else wants, but they don't know how to get it,'" she explains.
She even says her costar Craig Sheffer told her point blank she was in a cult early into filming.
"I was like, 'No, no, no. Cults are weird. Cults are people in robes chanting crazy things and drinking Kool-Aid," she told him. "That's not what we do!'"
Eventually, the cracks began to show. but Lenz didn't know that she could get out. She'd married a fellow "family" member and in 2012, a year after the birth of her daughter Rosie, she realized she wanted to leave both her marriage and the cult. But it wasn't easy.
"The stakes were so high," she says. "They were my only friends. I was married into this group. I had built my entire life around it. If I admitted that I was wrong ... everything else would come crumbling down."
To read more about Bethany Joy Lenz and how she finally managed to leave the cult, read this week's issue of PEOPLE on stands Friday.
Dinner for Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Show (While also in an Actual Cult!) comes out Oct. 22 and is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.
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Read the original article on People.