28 Celebrities Who Left the Church of Scientology (& Why)

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November 27, 2024 at 1:12pm EST

• Nicole Kidman

  Image Credit: Gilbert Flores/Variety

  Scientology reportedly played a role in Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise’s 2001 split, after 10 years of marriage.

  Kidman reportedly briefly practiced Scientology when she married the actor but was never hugely active in the church. After they split, the couple’s two children remained members of the Church, leading to rumors of an estrangement with their mother.

  In a 2018 interview with Who, Kidman made a rare comment about her older kids, Isabella and Connor. “They are adults,” Kidman said. “They are able to make their own decisions. They have made choices to be Scientologists, and as a mother, it’s my job to love them.”

• Katie Holmes

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  Katie Holmes was married to Tom Cruise, arguably Scientology’s celebrity poster boy, from 2006 to 2012. Holmes apparently blindsided the Mission Impossible actor when she filed for divorce in 2012. Reports soon surfaced one of the reasons she wanted to split was because she didn’t want their daughter, Suri, raised as a Scientologist.

  Holmes relocated to New York City with her daughter after her divorce and has never spoken about Scientology since.

• Mimi Rogers

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  According to the Telegraph, actress Mimi Rogers was brought up in the Church of Scientology thanks to her father’s friendship with founder L. Ron Hubbard. 

  “It’s not like I ever ‘converted’ to Scientology, rather, that philosophy was simply part of my upbringing,” she told the LA Times in 1991. “I think it was an excellent system of belief to grow up with.”

  Rogers is credited with introducing Tom Cruise, to whom she was married from 1987 until 1990, to Scientology. Rogers reportedly left the Church after their divorce. 

• Brad Pitt

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  Brad Pitt generally isn’t known for his Scientology beliefs but he allegedly spent three years studying at the Church after being introduced by then-girlfriend Juliette Lewis, who he dated from 1989 until 1993. 

  An alleged former Scientologist told The Sun in 2020 that Pitt took classes in the Portland Scientology Center to be out of the public eye. There, he allegedly underwent rigorous training but ultimately left the group in 1993, the same year he split from Lewis.  

• Demi Moore

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  Demi Moore reportedly practiced Scientology briefly until she married Bruce Willis. However, Willis didn’t believe in it and it led Moore to leaving the Church, per Insider. 

• Juliette Lewis

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  Juliette Lewis was born into Scientology as her parents were members and began practicing actively in the 90s and even credited the Church with helping her end her drug addiction. 

  Lewis was also a long-time defender of the Church, telling Time in 2015, “At the end of the day, I’m into protecting my freedom of choice, freedom of voice, freedom of religion, freedom of expression.” 

  However, in 2021, she subtly confirmed to The New York Times that she is no longer in the Church and described herself as a “spiritualist.” 

• Bijou Phillips

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  Actress Bijou Phillips reportedly left Scientology in late 2023 after her ex-husband Danny Masterson was expelled from the church following his rape conviction.

  Masterson was sentenced to 30 years in prison for the 2003 rapes of two women in September 2023 and Phillips filed for divorce two days later. 

  “Bijou left a few weeks after she found out that Danny had been declared an SP [suppressive person] for not living up to the standards of the church,” DailyMail reported in January 2024.

  It is unclear when exactly Phillips joined the religion but she did start dating Masterson, who was raised in Scientology, back in 2004. 

• Sharon Stone

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  According to a 2008 profile in The Independent, Sharon Stone subscribed to Scientology in the mid-1990s. However, she ended up finding Buddhism after her 1998 marriage to journalist Phil Bronstein. 

  In 2021, she told Vogue she uses Buddhist teachings and meditations to stay grounded. 

• Riley Keough

  Image Credit: Roger Kisby

  Keough was born into the Church after her mother, Lisa Marie Presely, and her grandmother, Priscilla Presley, joined after Elvis’ 1977 death. Lisa Marie reportedly met Keough’s father, Danny Keough, through the Church.

  However, it is reported that the Daisy Jones & The Six star left Scientology in 2014. In August 2023, she told Vanity Fair that she is “spiritual” but not religious. “‘Faith’ is a loaded word for people, but I think faith is faith in anything—faith in love, humanity, the universe, whatever it is. I don’t go to church, but I was always able to identify that spirituality was something that I really needed in my life.”

• Nazanin Boniadi

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  General Hospital star Nazanin Boniadi was active in the Church of Scientology in the mid-2000s. A 2012 Vanity Fair article claimed she was “auditioned” to be Tom Cruise’s wife after he split from Nicole Kidman and dated him for several months.

  2015 documentary Going Clear alleged she was one of dozens of women the Church vetted for the role. However, the Church denies that any such project took place. 

  Per Insider, Boniadi left the Church in 2012.

• Peaches Geldof

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  In a 2009 interview, British model and daughter of Boomtown Rats frontman Bob Geldof, Peaches Geldof stated that she was a Scientologist.

  “I’ve been [a Scientologist] for a while now. It’s like, I was confused about what path to go through and I feel like I needed a spiritual path and I was looking at different things,” she said, per Digital Spy.

  However, around the time of her 2014 death, it was reported that Geldof identified herself as a member of the Ordo Templi Orientis, which is a society that allegedly practices sex magic. 

• Candice Bergen

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  Candice Bergen was reportedly in Scientology in the 1960s, but it didn’t last long at all, per Business Insider. 

• Michelle Visage

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  During a September 2023 appearance on Las Culturistas podcast, Michelle Visage revealed that she dabbled in Scientology early in her career.

  Visage says she was introduced to the Church by friend Leah Remini. “They start out and they get you in good with some really important courses that can help your way of life,” she explained. 

  She said that, over time, she was struggling to afford the Church’s course but a breaking point occurred when she studied the “tone scale,” which “tells you where people are rated in life,” Visage claimed.

  “Murderers and pedophiles are down at 100 and a deity, a god, is at 0. I started going through the scale, and literally at 90-something was pedophiles, murderers, and homosexuals. So I took the book, and I shut it,” she said. 

• Neil Gaiman

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  Coraline author Neil Gaiman was raised in the Church of Scientology, but now considers it his family’s religion, not his own.

  “Most of our social activities were involved with Scientology or our Jewish family,” he told The New Yorker in 2010. “It would get very confusing when people would ask my religion as a kid. I’d say, ‘I’m a Jewish Scientologist.'”

  In this same interview he said he doesn’t currently identify as a Scientologist.

• Laura Prepon

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  In 2021, Laura Prepon told People that she “no longer practicing Scientology.” While this is a new revelation to the public, the former Orange Is the New Black star admitted that she hasn’t practiced “in close to five years” and that the religion is “no longer part of my life.”

  Prepon, who originally joined the Church in the late 90s, revealed that becoming a mother shifted her mindset. “If motherhood has taught me anything so far, it’s that something can work out for a period of time and then you move on and evolve from that,” she said.

• Leah Remini

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  Leah Remini has been Scientology’s most vocal former member after her 2013 exit. 

  Remini was raised in the Church from the age of 9 but says she experienced negative repercussions over her questioning the whereabouts of Shelly Miscavige, the wife of leader David Miscavige who has not been seen publicly since 2007

  Remini has made many allegations against the Church over the years, including a 2023 lawsuit against the organization in which she claimed she has been “stalked, surveilled, harassed, threatened, intimidated” for over a decade by the Church. Scientology has denied the allegations. The case is ongoing.

• Beck

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  In a 2019 interview with the Sunday Morning Herald Beck claimed he is not a Scientologist and even insinuated that he never was.

  “I think there’s a misconception that I am a Scientologist. I’m not a Scientologist. I don’t have any connection or affiliation with it,” he said, admitted that his dad, composer David Campbell is a member. 

  However, as The Hollywood Reporter notes, Beck identified himself as a Scientologist in a 2005 interview. “Yeah, I’m a Scientologist. My father has been a Scientologist for about 35 years, so I grew up in and around it and stuff,” he said.

  Beck was married to well-known Scientologist Marissa Ribisi from 2004 until 2019.

• Lisa Marie & Priscilla Presley

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  Lisa Marie and Priscilla Presley were considered high-powered Scientologists after joining in the late 70s, while Lisa Marie was a child.

  According to Dame Magazine, Lisa Marie hinted at defying Scientology in her 2012 song “You Ain’t See Nothin’ Yet.”

  She opened up further about why she left in a 2013 interview. “Uncovering the fact that I was surrounded by people who were not well-intended, for one,” she told USA Weekend, via Us Weekly, at the time. “Confidants [who were] very, very intimately and closely involved with me and my life. And had been for years. Basically, it was a big sinister situation, where there was like, kind of intel and covert ops going on, and a whole effort to control me that I didn’t know about.”

  Priscilla has been less vocal about her experience in the Church but is suspected to have left around the same time. 

• Jada Pinkett Smith & Will Smith

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  Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith were first linked to Scientology in 2008 when they started a school, New Village Academy, in Calabasas, California with teaching methods that had clear ties to the Church of Scientology. 

  Ex-member Leah Remini also stated that Pinkett Smith was a member in 2017 and alleged that she had seen the Red Table Talk host at the Scientology Celebrity Centre in Hollywood. Pinkett Smith defended herself on Twitter, writing, “I have studied Dianetics, and appreciate the merits of Study Tech… but I am not a Scientologist.”

• Jason Lee

  Image Credit: Fairchild Archive/Penske Media.

  Jason Lee allegedly joined the Church in 1995 while dating Marissa Ribisi but revealed in 2016 that he left.

  This admission after his ex-wife Carmen Llywelyn blamed his devotion to Scientology for their 2001 divorce in a scathing 2015 essay for Gawker, per The Independent.

  The following year, Lee spoke to local Texas outlet The Dentonite about his move to the Dallas suburb and rumors that he and wife Ceren Alkac planned to set up a Scientology center there.

  “Being that we don’t practice Scientology, and that we aren’t particularly interested in opening religious centers in general, we have no plans to open a Scientology center,” he said. 

• Tiffany Haddish

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  Tiffany Haddish revealed in 2019 that she “took a few courses” in the Church of Scientology after being approached to join while at a casting in LA.

  “They found out I was homeless,” she said, per USA Today. “And then they were like, ‘If you stay here, we’ll pay you $50 a month and you’ll have a roof over your head and you can help us in Inglewood and the South Central area (in Los Angeles).’ Because I guess they didn’t have any people like me in their organization.”

  However, Haddish won’t up leaving when she realized the accomadation at the center involved bunk beds. “I don’t do bunk beds, it’s just not my thing,” she said.

• Jerry Seinfeld

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  Jerry Seinfeld was never officially a Scientologist but he did take some classes in his youth. “In my early years of stand-up, it was very helpful. I took a couple of courses[…]I learned some things about communication that really got my act going,” he told Parade in 2007.

  During a 2020 appearance on the WTF With Marc Maron podcast, Seinfeld also reflected on his experience.

  “I did do a course in Scientology in, like, ’75 … in New York,” the comedian said. “I found it very interesting, never pursued it.”

  He added that the course put an “emphasis on ethical behavior,” a concept he “liked” and tries to abide by.

• Jason Beghe

  Image Credit: Rob Latour/Variety.

  Chicago P.D. star Jason Beghe is another outspoken former member of Scientology.

  The tough-talking actor left the Church in 2007 after joining back in 1994 and released a bombshell 2008 interview stated that Scientology is “very dangerous for your spiritual, psychological, mental, emotional health and evolution.”

  His comments made him the target of Scientology’s allegedly more vengeful side.

  “As soon as I posted that video on YouTube they contacted me,” he told Rolling Stone in 2015. “For a couple of years I became a real pain in the ass to them, so they started to attack me with phony lawsuits. They tried to bankrupt me and they came close.”

• Tom Berenger

  Image Credit: Fairchild Archive/Penske Media.

  Inception star Tom Berenger was once a member of the Church of Scientology but left on a bitter note around 1997 amid his divorce from second wife Lisa Williams.

  Per The New York Post, Berenger claimed in his divorce battle that his ex became “so involved and mentally entrenched in Scientology that she abandoned me.” He also requested the couple’s three children not be raised in the Church.

• Jeffrey Tambor

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  In 2008, Jeffrey Tambor addressed reports that he was a member of the Church of Scientology. “I took some Scientology classes at one time, studied Scientology for a while, but no more. I have nothing against it, but I am no longer a Scientologist,” he told LA Magazine.

  He elaborated in a 2017 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, saying he took classes for two years but left after he was pressured to leave then-wife Katie Mitchell. However, he had nothing bad to say about the Church.

  “I actually had a very good time. And I met a lot of very nice people,” he said. “All experiences work, and they add to the paint. I don’t think hard feelings help anything.”

• Christopher Reeve

  Image Credit: ph: Michael Lutch / ©PBS / Courtesy Everett Collection.

  Per Cheatsheet, the late Superman star wrote in his 1990 memoir that he joined the Church of Scientology at age 22, two years before his iconic role. 

  He claimed that he began the “auditing” process but did a test of his own on the Church which made him decide to stop pursuing membership. He says that during one auditing session, while hooked to a lie detector machine, or E-meter, he was asked to share his life story and decided to share modified version of Greek mythology instead. 

  “I didn’t expect my auditor to be familiar with Greek mythology; I was simply relying on her ability, assisted by the E-Meter, to discern the truth. The fact that I got away with a blatant fabrication completely devalued my belief in the process,” he wrote. 

  The Superman actor had reportedly only dabbled with Scientology in the past. Legend has it that Reeve’s interactions with Scientology ended when he was hooked up to a lie-detector machine for some unknown reason. Reeve apparently proceeded to lie throughout his interview and the ostensibly Scientology-approved machines didn’t pick up on those lies. He left shortly after this encounter.