She spent her earliest years inside a controversial religious sect — a world where “free love” was celebrated, obedience was demanded, and the children were told to prepare for the second coming.
For a while, it seemed almost peaceful… until it wasn’t.
Anything but ordinary
She was once one of Hollywood’s biggest stars — a breakout actress who shot to fame in one of the most iconic horror films ever made and worked with some of the industry’s most celebrated directors.
But that life… is long gone.
In 2020, she walked away from the spotlight, left the United States, and built a quiet, stripped-down life in Mexico. And she hasn’t looked back once.
Her childhood was anything but ordinary. She was born in 1973 in Florence, Italy, to an Irish-born artist father, and an American-born writer mother, Terri.
Her father ran an Italian chapter of the Children of God and while most kids were learning to ride bikes or going to school, the future star was living in communal compounds. She traveled across Europe with her parents, and watched adults around her embrace a lifestyle she never felt connected to.
Even as a young girl, she sensed something was wrong.
She believed in God, yes — but not in the group’s strict roles for women or their “hippie aesthetic,” as she would later call it.
“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,” she told People.
