File this under #WhoKnew?!
Before he was a mega-star, Brad Pitt dabbled in Scientology for three years where he was “twinned” with a 15-year-old girl for up to five hours a day in a hot sauna during “purification” rituals and screamed at by church superiors during “bull baiting” sessions.
Pitt was introduced to the religion in the early 1990s by his then-girlfriend, actress Juliette Lewis, and dabbled in it for three years before eventually breaking off with both Lewis and the church to seek superstardom on his own.
A Scientology source recalled that during Pitt’s time there he underwent a “purification rundown” at the Portland Celebrity Center, spending hours in a hot sauna where he was assigned the teenage girl as a “buddy.”
The source, an ex-follower, told the Sun: “I was being trained up to be a course supervisor, so was sent to Celebrity Center Portland for training. While I was there I met the teenage daughter of the executive director of a Portland-based Scientology company. … One of the things she told me was that Brad Pitt, who was dating Scientologist Juliette Lewis at the time, did the purification rundown at Celebrity Center Portland. He did it there to keep out of the public eye.”
The girl was chosen to “twin” with Pitt as “she was the daughter of an established Scientologist. … In the Church of Scientology, people are often paired and made responsible for getting each other through courses, so she sat in the sauna with Pitt every day for the month, or so, that it took to get through it. She was definitely in the sauna with him, but there was nothing bad about it.”
The sauna is part of purification process “developed by Scientology founder L Ron Hubbard, which consists of high doses of vitamins, long saunas and exercise,” according to the paper.
According to Scientology records, Pitt completed some therapies in July 1991 and a “special course in human evaluation” in May 1993.
Meanwhile, Pitt’s former church supervisor, Michael Mallen, recalled to the Sun how he “insulted the s–t out” of Pitt and verbally abused him until he stormed out of the classroom.
“Brad was doing the therapeutic (training routines),” said Mallen, who spent 40 years as a Scientologist before finally leaving in 2014 and writing a book, “Brainwashed,” about his time in the church.
The first TR involves you sitting across from another person with eyes closed for some time,” Mallen told the paper. “Then you look at another person with eyes open for two hours. … Once you pass that drill, you go into what’s called bullbaiting. The ‘coach’ tries to get the student to react by pushing the student’s ‘buttons’. That’s what I did with Brad Pitt. I did it mercilessly, insulting the s–t out of him. His then girlfriend Juliette Lewis was there. He got so pissed off, he walked out of the trailer and just split. Juliette had to rescue him; he just needed to cool off. I guess no one had bullbaited him before. I was going pretty hard on him, but that’s the whole point, to get the person where they’re no longer reacting and can comfortably be there.”
Luckily for Mallen, Lewis was able to cajole Pitt back that time. “No one wants a celebrity to leave. If he hadn’t come back, I’d have been in big trouble,” Mallen recalled.
Pit eventually bolted for good in 1993.
“I heard he did the purification rundown in Portland,” Mallen said. “Looks like he decided he’d had enough around that time. They tried to get him back, but he never continued with Scientology.”
A rep for Pitt did not immediately return a message seeking comment.