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