Glenn Close Grew Up In A Cult

October 16, 2014 / Posted by:

All together now: And you’re not in one anymore, Glenn, so you can stop dressing like you are!

In an article on The Hollywood Reporter about her return to Broadway in A Delicate Balance, Glenn Close says that up until the age of 22, she was injecting the Kool-Aid by the gallon while being part of a cult called the Moral Re-Armament. MRA was founded and ran by Rev. Frank Buchman whom THR describes as “a violently anti-intellectual and possibly homophobic evangelical fundamentalist from Pennsylvania.” Frank told his followers that only those with special guidance from God were sin-free and it was their responsibility as humans to change others. If you change the word “God” to “Angelina Jolie,” that right there would be the Brangeloonie life motto. Actually, it would be the motto of many religions.

Glenn’s father Dr. William Taliaferro Close, who was the personal doctor of Congolese leader Mobutu Sese Seko, dragged his family into the MRA cult when she was just 7 years old. Everything she knew and loved was ripped from her and while her father was working in the Congo, she along with her brother and sisters lived at MRA’s headquarters, which was a “glamorous” hotel, in Switzerland. She lived at the MRA’s lair for two years and when she was 15, she left Switzerland to go to a fancy boarding school in Connecticut. Glenn didn’t take a machete to the leash running from her neck to MRA’s hand until she was 22. Once she left, she still had a hard time realizing that having fun isn’t a sin against God and using your brain to produce original thoughts is okay.

“You basically weren’t allowed to do anything, or you were made to feel guilty about any unnatural desire. If you talk to anybody who was in a group that basically dictates how you’re supposed to live and what you’re supposed to say and how you’re supposed to feel, from the time you’re 7 till the time you’re 22, it has a profound impact on you. It’s something you have to [consciously overcome] because all of your trigger points are [wrong].”

“Hmmm, why do those first two sentences sound SO familiar?” – every Duggar daughter

Glenn wouldn’t get into why she left. She only said that several things led her to realize that she needed to pull the QUIT THIS BITCH switch fast. But before she got out of there, she performed with the MRA offshoot Up With The People who performed EVERYWHERE in the 70s including the Super Bowl.

Why didn’t I know that Up With The People was connected to a cult? I should’ve known. Those manufactured happy faces… Those creepy fake smiles… Those clean-cut, preppy hairstyles that only serial killers who are trying hard to blend in with society get… They’re like a slightly less sinister version of Glee.

And Glenn hasn’t worked with Tom Cruise, but if they’ve ever had a conversation, I would love to read the transcript of that. “So Glenn, we’re having a little barley water mixer at the Scientology -“ “Have a seat, bitch, I’ve already been through that.” 

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