Actress Bethany Joy Lenz Reveals How She Lost Millions to a Cult: ‘It Was Horrifying’

The ‘One Tree Hill’ star is opening up about how she lost nearly all the money she made on the series to a cult and had to start over: “I had many nights weeping on the floor”When Bethany Joy Lenz was filming One Tree Hill over the course of nine years, she never imagined that all the money she earned from the series would eventually get wiped out by the leader of a small Christian cult that she’d been lured into over the entire decade.

In her new memoir Dinner For Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Show (While Also in an Actual Cult!), out Oct. 22, she openly talks about how it felt to escape both her marriage and the cult, only to discover they’d wiped her bank account of close to $2 million.

“It was really horrifying,” she tells PEOPLE for a story in this week’s print issue. She explains that she basically had to start over from scratch, despite being on one of the most popular teen dramas of the early aughts.

“To leave a TV show after nine seasons, to leave all my friends [from the cult] that I had known for the last 10 years, to leave my marriage, to leave the state, all at the same time … and then it was just me and my baby in Hollywood, like, ‘Hire me, anyone?’ Not knowing how I was going to make rent because all the money was gone .. .it was legitimately incredibly difficult.”

She says during her darkest moments, she would just break down in tears.

“I had many, many weeping-on-the-floor nights, just trying to figure out how to manage and what I was going to do and what to do with my emotions, the anger, the injustice, all those things,” she adds.

Bethany Joy Lenz at her PEOPLE cover shoot in Sept, 2024.John Russo

“There’s a part of me that’s still like, ‘Oh, God, it’s so gauche to talk about money. Don’t. And there are so many people who would never even imagine seeing that kind of money, let alone what I was left with in the bank account, which, eventually, all just went to lawyers anyway. But it was hard. It was very hard.”

Despite her initial shame and regret over her experience in the cult, Lenz says now she understands her struggle was for the greater good.

“First of all, I wouldn’t have my daughter. It was all worth it because of her,” she says. She’d married fellow “family” member Michael Galleoti in 2005, and the two welcomed daughter Rosie in 2011. They divorced in 2012, the same year Lenz left the group.

Dinner for Vampires, Bethany Joy Lenz’s memoir is out Oct. 22.

“But more than that, it’s worth it because I’m going to be able to share [my story] with so many people out there who have experienced this and don’t know what to do with their shame. Or who may be currently experiencing it and don’t quite know how to identify what they’re feeling, but maybe they can recognize and see something in what I’m saying that’ll make them turn a lightbulb on.”

She adds, “It might also help people who might otherwise get into something like this, and now they know what red flags to look for.”

These days, Lenz says she’s finally found peace.

“There are days when I feel happy. There are days when I’m grouchy and not happy and frustrated because of life … but I’m OK. I’m going to be OK.” she explains. “I feel like I’ve righted myself. It’s like one of those wobble things that’s weighted, and you put it on your desk, and it always rights itself. I was wobbling, and I feel like I righted myself.”

To read more about Bethany Joy Lenz and how she finally managed to leave the cult, read this week’s issue of PEOPLE on stands Friday.