Featured Image Credit: Jamie McCarthy/WireImage/Getty Images/Instagram/@msbethanyjoylenz
Topics: TV And Film, Celebrity
Lucy Devine
Topics: TV And Film, Celebrity
Bethany Joy Lenz has revealed how her daughter played a huge part in her leaving a 'cult' after almost a decade.
The actress, 43, who is best known for starring in the hit teen show One Tree Hill alongside Sophia Bush, Chad Michael Murray and Hilarie Burton, recently spoke about her experience of being involved in an ultra-Christian group in Idaho, where she claims her choices, finances and career were controlled.
During that time, Lenz welcomed her daughter Rosie, with ex-husband Michael Galeotti.
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"I left because of my daughter," she said on Good Morning America. "I left because it was time.
"I remember having this thought, I said, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me and why I will allow myself to be treated this way, but there’s no way in hell I’m going to allow this to happen to her. We gotta get out.'"
It's not the first time Lenz has spoken about her time in the group, explaining to PEOPLE that she felt it was 'important' to speak about the 'suffering' she went through.
"I don't think of it as brave," she said. "I think of it as important. Living silently in the suffering I experienced, I don't know if that helps anyone.
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"To leave a TV show after nine seasons, to leave all my friends [from the cult] that I had known for the last 10 years, to leave my marriage, to leave the state, all at the same time ... and then it was just me and my baby in Hollywood, like, 'Hire me, anyone?'
"Not knowing how I was going to make rent because all the money was gone... it was legitimately incredibly difficult."
Lenz - who detailed her experience in her book, Dinner for Vampires, also claimed that she had lost all of her earnings she'd made on One Tree Hill during her time in the 'cult'.
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"I had many, many weeping-on-the-floor nights, just trying to figure out how to manage and what I was going to do and what to do with my emotions, the anger, the injustice, all those things," she said.
"There's a part of me that's still like, 'Oh, God, it's so gauche to talk about money. Don't.'
"And there are so many people who would never even imagine seeing that kind of money, let alone what I was left with in the bank account, which, eventually, all just went to lawyers anyway.
"But it was hard. It was very hard."