Before she was a successful Hollywood actress, 55-year-old Michelle Pfeiffer was part of a "very controlling" group that she now identifies as breatharianism cult members, or people who believe that humans can survive without food or water and get all of the nourishment they need from the sun.
It wasn't until she met her first husband, Peter Horton, that Pfeiffer says she was "saved" from the group. At the time, Horton was cast in a film about Rev. Moon Sun-myung's Unification Church, or the "Moonies" as they're known, and the two discussed cults, prompting to Pfeiffer to realize she was in one.
"We were talking with an ex-Moonie and he was describing the psychological manipulation and I just clicked," she said in an interview for Telegraph's Stella magazine of her "ah-ha" moment.
The breatharianism-adhering couple that Pfeiffer was involved with put on her a strict diet that according to her, "nobody can adhere to," and acted as her "personal trainers," so to speak.
"They worked with weights and put people on diets. Their thing was vegetarianism," Pfeiffer said to the magazine. "They were very controlling. I wasn't living with them but I was there a lot and they were always telling me I needed to come more. I had to pay for all the time I was there, so it was financially very draining. They believed that people in their highest state were breatharian."
Pfeiffer is now a vegan, although she's moved on from her former breatharian lifestyle. The New Age following has been linked to pro-anorexia advocacy, though proponents claim that the ideals take years to master properly and require a great deal of self-discipline and courage.
The lifestyle cult has been gaining recognition over the years as more and more people die of starvation and malnutrition, providing the answer to the likely question, "How do its followers survive?" Breatharianisms also practice sungazing, or staring directly into the sun, which can cause permanent damage to the eyes.
Victims of breatharianism include a Scottish woman who died in 1999 after attempting to "spiritually cleanse" her body, and the death of followers of Jasmuheen, a prominent advocate of breatharianism in the 1990s, including 49-year-old Australian-born Scotland resident Verity Linn, 31-year-old Munich preschool teacher Timo Degen, and 53-year-old Melbourne resident Lani Marcia Roslyn Morris.
