How Michelle Pfeiffer was seduced by a deadly cult that says you can live on air alone

Scarface actress joined the cult when she first reached Hollywood aged 20
Followers told food is worse than heroin and forced to pay hundreds
Set on specific regime of grapefruit, ice cream and chicken to 'cleanse'
A strong of practitioners have died trying to attain a life without food

PUBLISHED: 19:26 EST, 15 November 2013 | UPDATED: 19:26 EST, 15 November 2013

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Believer: Pfeiffer thought the cult's fasting and fitness regime would keep her slim

Their spiritual father now hides out in a motel in New Mexico, convinced he is being watched by a powerful secret society called the Illuminati, and insisting he will live for ever on sulphur and nitrogen in the air and the gold in his blood.

As for his brethren, spread across the world, they’re still going strong — if you can call starving your body of food and water in an attempt to connect with the Earth’s ‘pranic’ energies ‘going strong’.

Take a deep breath – you’ll need it — and step into the bizarre and very dangerous world of Breatharianism, a New Age cult in which film star Michelle Pfeiffer has admitted she was once embroiled.

The beautiful 55-year-old star of Dangerous Liaisons and Batman Returns has revealed that, in the early Eighties, she became involved with a movement that believed humans can exist without food or water.

These so-called Breatharians were ‘sort of personal trainers’ who put her ‘on a diet that nobody can adhere to’ and ‘thoroughly brainwashed’ her, she said.

Pfeiffer, then in her 20s, was saved by her future husband, actor Peter Horton, who had been making a film about the Moonies. ‘I was helping him to do research on this cult and I realised I was in one!’

Horton persuaded his then girlfriend to cut her links with the group.

Pfeiffer has declined to identify any members but said she never lived with them.

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Instead, convinced that their regime of hardcore fasting and mysticism would keep her slim and expand her spiritual horizons, she would visit them three times a week — as they gradually emptied her bank account with their incessant demands for fees.

They persuaded her to become a vegetarian via ‘fruitarianism’ (eating only fruit) as a first step towards the goal of full Breatharianism — living on the supposed nutrients in air and light.

The actress wanted to leave the group, but they persuaded her that she wouldn’t be able to survive without them.

Such blind devotion rang bells this week with other Breatharians from those heady days in New Age-obsessed Eighties California. They’re still alive and — surprise, surprise — living on more than fresh air and sunlight.

'Saved': First husband actor, Peter Horton, helped her see she was part of a cult as they researched his role for the film Moonies in 1979, about a notorious religious group. The pair were married between 1981 and 1988

‘I remember the craving for that intense high you get after about the fifth day of fasting — it was like a drug,’ recalls Kendra Wagner, now a 54-year-old teacher in Seattle.

‘You feel you’re floating and above worry, anxiety and the worldly things in life. People got obsessed with it. They felt Breatharianism could bring them closer to Nirvana.’

Ms Wagner admits she managed to fast for no more than ten days (while drinking water) before she felt ‘dizzy’ and stopped. Like Pfeiffer, she too was looking for a way to stay slim, and a way of life that would ‘expand my consciousness’.

And so she came under the spell of the eccentric father of modern Breatharianism, Wiley Brooks, a former New York sound engineer who worked with Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin.

It’s not clear whether he counselled Pfeiffer — he insists he met her at least once — but in those days, nobody in the U.S. was preaching Breatharianism apart from him.

'I remember the craving for that intense high you get after about the fifth day of fasting - it was like a drug'

Kendra Wagner, former Breatharianism follower

The concept of ‘living on light’ is thought to have its roots in the transcendental meditation techniques of Indian yogis and Tibetan monks.

A meditation devotee, Brooks says he first heard about it from an Indian fakir in the Seventies. After that, Brooks became a celebrity on the New Age touring circuit, drawing hundreds of followers to intensive five-day $500 seminars.

Dressed in a beige velour tracksuit, he would stand for hours, barely moving, as he told his flock that their bodies could be sustained by prana, the cosmic energy believed in Eastern religions to come from the sun and to be conveyed through light and air.

Just occasionally, he added, it would have to be topped up with fluids to counteract the pollution in the air of modern towns and cities. ‘Food is more addictive than heroin,’ he would tell them.

Followers had first to ‘clean their blood’ with a diet of 24 food items such as grapefruit, eggs, chicken, fish, and rum-and-raisin Haagen-Dazs ice-cream (he was quite specific on that point).

It wasn’t just health food fanatics and starry-eyed mystics that attended, but doctors and scientists who were keen to discover whether he might actually be on to something, particularly after he appeared on television in 1980 and showed he could lift 1,100lb — about ten times his weight.

Naive: Young Ms Pfeiffer was just 20 when she moved to Hollywood to start her career and got sucked in

Steps: They persuaded her to be a fruitarianism - just fruit - as a way towards breatharianism - no food at all

Brooks claimed he had fasted for 19 years, but it all ended badly in 1983 when he was seen emerging from a corner shop with a bag full of junk food. He was later found to have left trays of room service food, including chicken pot pie, outside his hotel room.

‘A lot of people felt tricked and deceived, me included,’ said Ms Wagner, one of his former regional co-ordinators. Though she and many other followers left the movement in disgust, others soon took up the Breatharian banner.

Followers to first ‘clean their blood’ with 24 food items including grapefruit, eggs, chicken, fish, and rum & raisin Haagen-Dazs ice-cream (he was quite specific on that point)

Today, there are at least a dozen self-proclaimed Breatharian gurus around the world, connecting with followers and each other through expensive workshops and retreats, books, videos and — of course — the internet.

The most famous is a self-proclaimed prophet of ‘spiritual cleansing’ from Australia called Jasmuheen, who claims a person can survive on prana energy and 300 calories a day.

The blonde Jasmuheen was a former financial consultant named Ellen Greve before she saw the light — in her case the ‘liquid light’ of the divine life force from which the enlightened can draw nourishment.

Starting out: Pfeiffer had to go to numerous photocalls for parts, and thought the diet would help

Expense: She would fork out $500 for five days of intensive therapy and spiritual guidance with the cult

'Food is more addictive than heroin,' the spiritual leader would tell them as he preached the ways of the religion

As well as running a website she calls the Cosmic Internet Academy, she has lectured around the world, including in Britain. She offers — she says with no hint of irony — ‘some unusual solutions to world hunger and health issues’.

However, like Wiley Brooks, she has been caught out a couple of times — once after a reporter found her home loaded with food (she claimed it was for her husband, a convicted fraudster) and when a British journalist accompanied her to an airport and discovered that she had ordered a vegetarian on-board meal. ‘But I won’t be eating it,’ she said.

Jasmuheen claims she has been a Breatharian since 1993. But when a TV camera crew monitored her for a ten-day fasting experiment, it was cancelled after four days when her health severely deteriorated.

Regime: Followers were told to 'clean their blood' with 24 foods including Haagen-Dazs rum and raisin ice cream

Amazingly, none of this appears to have dented her credibility with believers. She says she has around 5,000 followers worldwide and a glance at her website confirms she is currently on the European leg of a world tour.

Other Breatharians are more secretive. There is the Maha Devi Ascension Movement, a small American cult run by a German woman who has been photographed dressing up like an Ancient Egyptian priestess, and reportedly claims to be an immortal from Atlantis.

The group caused a stir in the South Pacific when they turned up on the tiny island of Niue in 2006. After promising to invest in health spas, they ran up debts of more than £200,000 and then resisted efforts by the local government — encouraged by New Zealand authorities — to throw them out.

Recovered: Eventually the eponymous actress broke free, later landing iconic roles such as Catwoman

In London, Jericho Sunfire — alias Richard Blackman — is an elaborately-tattooed former professional rugby player. He describes himself in online videos as a ‘Breatharian personal fitness guru’ and says it has taken him 17 years to complete his transition to full Breatharianism. A world without food would be ecological heaven, he says.

All this New Age mumbo-jumbo could be amusing if it wasn't for the fact that Breatharianism also kills people.

All this New Age mumbo-jumbo could be amusing if it wasn’t for the fact that Breatharianism also kills people. It has been linked to the deaths of a string of practitioners, including at least four who had read Jasmuheen’s book, Living On Light.

The latter include 49-year-old Verity Linn, an Australian who died alone in a tent in a remote part of the Scottish Highlands in 1999 after embarking on a 21-day fast.

Jasmuheen has denied responsibility in any of the deaths, comparing it with blaming Mercedes for road accidents.

The fatalities haven’t stopped others trying a total fast. In June, Naveena Shine, a 65-year-old British woman living in Seattle, gave up her attempt to live on sunlight after 47 days without food.

Established: The actress is now much more confident and a Hollywood heavyweight. The mother-of-two is currently starring alongside Robert De Niro in The Family about an Italian mob relocated to France

Breatharians always have an excuse for failing: Shine, who was drinking only water and tea, said financial pressures had been a ‘message from the universe that it is time to stop’. She did admit that her 20lb weight loss ‘could well be slow starvation’.

And what of Wiley Brooks, the man who set the ball rolling? Well, whatever he’s been inhaling for the past 30 years, it’s certainly done something to his critical faculties.

I tracked the friendly 77-year-old down to a motel in a desert town in New Mexico. He confided that his every move — including our conversation — was being monitored by the Illuminati, the secret society whom conspiracy theorists believe have pulled the world’s strings for centuries.

Proud: Now a strict vegan and settled with a family, Pfeiffer has spoken out about the cult that rocked her youth

He also said he had passed into a ‘new world’, a higher dimension where he breathes a mixture of nitrogen, sulphur and lithium, and his blood is full of precious metals — attributes we will all need when the planet becomes unbearably hot.

He admits he still eats and drinks a little, but only Diet Cokes and McDonald’s quarter pounders with cheese, which, would you believe it, perfectly balance out the toxins in the air.

Did he by any chance — in any existence — recall meeting Michelle Pfeiffer?

Actually, he believed he had met her once, although he insisted his own following never amounted to a cult.

Whether Breatharians are simple fraudsters or actually deluding themselves (and you’d have to be very deluded not to notice when you’re eating, as scientists insist these people so obviously are), Michelle Pfeiffer had a lucky escape. Others, tragically, have not been so fortunate.