Eleven
 Alone. Confused.
And still very young - Sola, confundida y aún demasiado
joven
 Alone.
Confused. And still very young. Pfeiffer in those struggling years
says she found herself 'getting real lost'
in drugs and alcohol. She succumbed to a cult. She had become
reclusive after Charlie Chan and the
Curse of the Dragon Queen and admitted,
'I quit smoking, drinking and taking drugs and went on long fasts.
I never saw anybody.' This is a hazy time in her life, and
a time she didn't, in 1992, want to dwell on. Her attitude was that
it was all in the past, a trap a lonely young girl fell into. The
cult was devoted to vegetarianism and metaphysics.
'The philosophy was so bizarre I couldn't
even tell it to you now,' Pfeiffer had said in 1989, adding,
'I obviously needed to have somebody controlling me, real bad, and
probably better it was them than drugs or some lecherous man. But
it did a lot of damage that I had to get over for years afterwards.'
Mind-control games insisted she exist on tiny portions of fruits
and vegetables. She wasn't allowed to touch breads, dairy products,
sugar or salt. But certain foods weren't all she was made to give
up: 'I was brainwashed. I gave them an enormous
amount of money.'
The cult had started her off on a twelve-day water fast.
'I used to go to their house three times a week. They convinced
me to become a vegetarian, and I gave up fish and meat and chicken.'
For two years - longer than anyone had known - she went through
a strict regimen of vegetarianism and physical and mind 'conditioning'.
In the last six months she wanted to leave the group but she was
convinced by the leaders she wasn't 'ready
to cope with life alone'.
 There
was a White Knight in the wings in true Tinseltown style. She was
twenty-two. Actor Peter Horton was
twenty-six. They met in Milton Katselas'
acting class. Horton is tall, blonde and blue-eyed, and, yes, his
physique is shaped like a V. He also had something else going for
him. He was an actor, a serious actor who didn't believe in compromises.
He would go on to be famous as Gary, the uncommitted, English teacher,
in the angst-driven television series
thirtysomething. But for the moment what Pfeiffer saw in
acting class was his eager, wide grin, mop of blonde hair and wispy
beard. They would drive over to the west side of Los Angeles after
class and wander around Santa Monica, the most European of any of
southern California's coastal communities. And they would talk seriously
about acting - and the future.
And Horton would work at prying his wife-to-be away from the cult:
'They were very didactic, trying to control their pupils' lives,
what they are, who they were with. I think it scared her a bit.'
 In
turn, Pfeiffer was also scared by the thought of being
'rescued by a man'. But she said, 'I
don't believe in women being saved by men, but I think it was true.
I was very lucky.' In a Hollywood way.
By chance Horton had been cast in Split
Image, a film thriller examining cults. He played a Moonie
co-starring with Karen Allen who was
Indiana Jones' girlfriend in Raiders
of the Lost Ark. Pfeiffer recalled: 'I
went with him to San Francisco where he researched cults, and I
realized that what the deprogrammers described was exactly the experience
I was in. I stopped seeing them then. I'd wanted to stop months
before but found it difficult. They get you to believe you won't
survive without them. Not until I was with Peter did I realize just
what I'd got myself into.'
 The
other breakthrough from this food-fetish Cult, which Pfeiffer, either
in fear of reprisal or embarrassment, will not identify, happened
in what otherwise Would have been normal circumstances -in a restaurant.
It was the middle of February in 1985, and on a chilly Pacific evening
they went to a cosy restaurant on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica:
'Peter said, "I think I'll have some
fish." And I suddenly said, "That sounds good to me."
I've been eating fish ever since.' She also has a penchant
for ice cream and junk food but just once in a while.
Her break away from the cult and into Horton's arms cemented their
relationship. And even in those early days Horton recognized something
extra special about the woman he loved: 'She
is a much bigger person than she was raised to believe.'
Credits: Picture #4 - Bond's
Michelle Pfeiffer Web Page
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