Tom Cruise may be the Church of Scientology’s most famous face, but other celebrities have been less public about their faith. From Mad Men star Elisabeth Moss to cast members of That ’70s Show, see the stars you might not have known were Scientologists.
Goody-two-shoes Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss’s character on AMC’s Mad Men) may be strictly Catholic, but Moss herself is a devoted Scientologist—and with her particular divorce experience, she may be just the person for Tom Cruise to turn to for advice. Moss married SNL funnyman Fred Armisen in 2009, but the union lasted only two years before the couple divorced, allegedly because of her heavy involvement with Scientology. She’s been sure to defend the merits of her religion, however. She told The Advocate of Scientology’s stance on gay marriage: “One of the most important things I take from my church is the idea of personal freedom and our rights as human beings, and that includes the right to date a man or a woman. Personal freedom is a very important concept in my religion, and I translate that to sexual orientation.”
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Along with Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs was one of the marquee names of the Beat Generation. Setting him apart from his fellow Beat writers, however, was his fascination with Scientology and in particular the practice of clearing “engrams,” or negative feelings, from the mind. In his later years, Burroughs renounced the church, even calling it “weird” and “fascist.” “Scientology was useful to me until it became a religion, and I have no use for religion,” he once wrote. “It’s just another one of those control-addict trips and we can all do without those.”
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Though he played the dim-witted, cash-strapped Randy on TV sitcom My Name Is Earl, Ethan Suplee apparently prefers his religion to be of the wealthy, celebrity-approved kind. Along with his My Name Is Earl co-star Jason Lee, Suplee is a proud Scientologist. He says he first converted after undergoing the religion’s detoxification program, known as Purification Rundown, which helped him get off drugs in the late 1990s. “I had hit bottom,” he once said. “I could only go up from there and I realized that I couldn’t wait to straighten myself out before getting into Scientology. I realized that I had to use Scientology to straighten out my life.”
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Jeff Conaway, best remembered as the tough-kid greaser Kenickie in 1978’s Grease and as Bobby Wheeler on the TV series Taxi, died of pneumonia last year. But according to Conaway’s doctors, it was his addiction to painkillers that led to his death—though he had turned to Scientology for help in kicking his drug-abusing habits. Conaway said his former Grease co-star John Travolta introduced him to the religion as a way of helping him through his troubles. “I’ve been doing Scientology,” Conaway told Inside Edition in 2008. “My doctor was like, ‘Holy cow,’ he says, ‘whatever you’ve been doing, keep doing it because it’s really working.’”
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If the name Vince Offer doesn’t ring a bell, “ShamWow Guy” almost certainly will. Vince Offer, known as Billy Mays’s successor in the business of shilling super-absorbent towels, has been a member of the Church of Scientology since 1982, when he was an aspiring filmmaker. He allegedly got kicked out of the church in 1997, however, when church officials disapproved of a straight-to-DVD-film Offer was producing, called The Underground Comedy Movie (Slash was in it). And although in 1999 he’d been let back in, by 2004 Offer’s relationship with the church had soured again. He filed a complaint against the church in “a quest to expose the human cruelty and destructive practices committed, still to this day, by the Church of Scientology's leadership helmed by David Miscavige.”
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Sonny Bono was a singer, actor, TV star, politician, and husband to Cher. Lesser known was that the star, born a Catholic, converted to Scientology after being introduced to the religion by actress Mimi Rogers, Tom Cruise’s first wife. (She also introduced Cruise to Scientology, though she later left the church.) Although he stated he was a Roman Catholic on all official documents, few doubted his ties to Scientology. Bono once said of the religion, “I openly studied Scientology … and then said thank you and left … the Scientology—there was no cult thing there.”
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He played the lovable pothead Hyde in That ’70s Show, but these days, Masterson focuses on deejaying—and Scientology. A second-generation Scientologist, he was introduced to the religion by his parents. “I have always been in Scientology my entire life,” Masterson said of his religion. “Each service in Scientology is something I have added to my toolbox of data for living.” In 2005 Masterson helped to promote the gala opening of Scientology’s “Psychiatry: an Industry of Death” Museum, created to denounce psychiatry as an industry entirely driven by profit.
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Danny Masterson’s former co-star Laura Prepon, is still mainly known as the levelheaded girl-next-door Donna from That ’70s Show—indeed, it was through her connections to the show that she was introduced to the Church of Scientology. Her former boyfriend Christopher Masterson, brother to Danny, first brought her into the church, and though the couple broke up last year, Prepon is still frequently sighted at the L.A. Scientology Center. She rarely speaks about her religion in interviews, but she was quick to defend her faith in an interview with Women’s Health. “Anyone who knows is just like, wow, if Laura is a Scientologist then there has to be something to this,” she told the magazine. “I know what’s true for me and what works for me.”
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Like TomKat and Elisabeth Moss and Fred Armisen, Jason Lee also reportedly saw his marriage fall apart because of Scientology. Lee’s ex-wife, Carmen Llywelyn, married to the star between 1995 and 2001, told Inside Edition, that their marriage was destroyed as a result of what she described as his obsession with the church. After Lee confronted his wife about her uneasiness toward Scientology, she said, he abruptly asked for a divorce. The My Name Is Earl star reportedly joined the church in the late 1980s, before he became an actor. Lee also defended his religion via Twitter after a fan questioned his beliefs. “Way to publicly demonstrate your ignorance,” the star tweeted. “I’m the same person I’ve always been, idiot.” He deactivated his Twitter account soon thereafter.
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