Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology

by Leah Remini

as a Scientologist you are expected to spend a minimum of two and a half hours a day, every day, seven days a week, at church, studying and/or in counseling.

These were the kinds of exchanges that proved what Scientology was teaching us—that people who don’t get the ideals of Scientology are not as able, or not as healthy and mentally sound, as we are and will attack it. And now I believed that was right. It was us against them.

Tom seemed like a child who had never been told no. People say that celebrities stop developing emotionally at the age of their success—which for Tom had been with Risky Business at twenty-one.

Even though Scientology sees itself as the authority on ethics and responsibility, obscuring the truth is built into its core.

There is no “right” way to be. I am flawed and imperfect, but am uniquely me. I don’t fit in and probably never will. And I don’t have to try to anymore. That other person was a lie. And let’s face it, normal is boring. We all have something to offer the world in some way, but by not being our authentic selves, we are robbing the world of something different, something special.