Shut Up And Eat Your Vegetables

"It was a mark of her vulnerability that shortly after her arrival she fell under the sway of a murky quasi-religious cult dedicated, as she puts it, to 'vegetarianism and metaphysics', that attempted to take control of her life and succeeded in taking most of her money. 'I was pretty young and very alone. I didn't live with them or anything – so I wasn't that far gone. Much later I did some research into cults to try to understand what had happened to me; and the way they operate is they hook people on very intellectual and existential ideas. And people who are always questioning and thinking, that kind of personality can sometimes lead to hopelessness, and that's where they get you.'

It also surprised her to discover, she says, that research suggests in terms of IQ people who end up in cults 'tend to be really smart'. She laughs. 'That didn't make me feel quite so bad.'"

-- Mick Brown, talking with Hollywood's Michelle Pfeiffer about cults, 'vegetarianism and metaphysics', and probably a lot of other "totally unrelated" issues, in The Telegraph.