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Post by sadie1263 on Aug 28, 2011 17:05:28 GMT
Many Hollywood stars had unusual childhoods -- casting calls instead of kindergarten, scripts to memorize instead of multiplication tables.
Some had odder upbringings than the rest.
In the latest issue of People magazine, Rose McGowan revealed her painful childhood in the Children of God sect – a religious movement that mixed the free-love attitudes of the '60s with proselytizing in the streets. The organization disbanded in 1978 amid reports of misconduct, child abduction and sexual abuse. McGowan's father ran the Italian chapter of Children of God, and McGowan spent much of her childhood traveling through in the sect's European communes with him, her mother and two siblings.
"You had no contact with the outside world," McGowan told People. "Things that are completely unacceptable became normal. I remember watching how the [cult's] men were with the women, and at a very early age I decided I did not want to be like those women. They were basically there to serve the men sexually -- you were allowed to have more than one wife."
McGowan said her family escaped before she got molested.
"There's a trail of some very damaged children that were in this group," she said. "As strong as I like to think I've always been, I'm sure I could have been broken. I know I got out by the skin of my teeth."
But McGowan's childhood didn't get "normal" from there. The star of "Scream" and the new "Conan the Barbarian" modeled for Italian magazines and returned to the U.S. with her parents at age 10. After they divorced, she ran away from home and was taken in by drag queens in Oregon.
"We didn't always know where our next meal was coming from, but there was so much camaraderie and love," she said in the September issue of the Advocate. "Not to mention, those girls could paint a face, and I learned how because of them."
McGowan is not the only star who grew up in a commune. Click through to see more celebrity families who spent time in far flung religious sects.
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