Juliette Lewis has a new interview with the Daily Beast to promote a number of projects. She’s promoting a 2015 tv show, Secrets & Lies, which sounds like a True Detective knockoff. Juliette will play a lead detective alongside Ryan Phillipe. In a movie called Kelly & Cal, she’ll play a washed-up punk singer who goes though an “existential crisis” after the birth of her first child. The “punk” label isn’t too far off base for anyone who’s listened to Juliette’s music.

Most of the time when I cover Juliette, I try and forget that she’s a Scientologist. She’s making it difficult this time because she discusses the CO$ in this interview. There are other topics too, but Juliette is so brainwashed by this cult. This discussion makes me forget that she’s a talented character actress who has held her own onscreen against a number of A-list men:

On life after 40: “I think the big thing, for me, is facing my parents’ mortality. That is horrifying, and I’m still dealing with it. There’s just so much wrapped up in it. My Dad is older and has Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, and it’s taken me seven years to accept it–and I still haven’t accepted it. I was going through that, and with my band, I’d been playing music for six years, but I realized that I still loved acting, storytelling, and characters, so that was doing my head in because I didn’t know how to balance both. I was struggling to strike a balance.”

Ageism in Hollywood: “With age, there’s definitely that stuff. But I don’t think so, because I’ve tried to stay pretty disengaged from the politics of Hollywoodism. I’ve always been an outsider. I’ve always been attracted to roles that would challenge me, and that wouldn’t come around very often. I sort of got lucky in that I was able to carve a niche for myself. I haven’t made a career off my looks, thank God, but hopefully how I’ve moved people emotionally, the directors I’ve been able to work with, and the stories I’ve been a part of.”

She was a movie “Cassandra” with A-listers: “Yeah, this is now part of my history that I can say we all came up together–Brad, Leo, Johnny Depp, George Clooney. It’s so funny. I try not to be cynical about Hollywood, but I remember that George’s first lead was From Dusk Till Dawn and, since he was coming from television, the studio was questioning, ‘Well, can he be the lead in a movie?’ And you’re thinking, ‘Dude! Are you kidding? Have an imagination!’ It’s amazing to think that it was even a question.”

Misconceptions against Scientology: “I’ll get all conspiratorial on you, and I’m just going to throw this out: The mainstream media is funded by pharmaceutical companies, so when you have the biggest movie star in the world at the time–Tom Cruise–coming out against anti-depressants and Ritalin and just saying, ‘Hey, why don’t you put a warning label on there?’ The thing about Scientology is it is anti-drug in that you’re seeking relationship or communication tools–simple basics on how to live better. So, when Tom came out about that, I’ve never seen someone get torn down so hard, and they still brutalize him with Scientology pieces to this day. It’s a religious philosophy and self-help movement. And you’ll never see a truthful word written about it in mainstream media.”

Getting recognized by fans: “It trips me out when 20-year-olds come up to me on the street and are like, ‘I loved Natural Born Killers!’ But then, I remember that when I was younger I was listening to music from the ’60s. And in the ’90s, with the exception of The Pixies, I was listening to trippy music from two decades prior.”

[From Daily Beast]

Bless her heart. Juliette doesn’t even realize that Tom Cruise was torn down for reasons other than holding an opinion against psychiatry. It would be fine if he simply didn’t believe in taking Prozac for himself. It would have been okay if Tom had simply suggested a warning label on meds. The problem was the way Tom said this stuff. Tom was an unhinged mess full of pointed fingers, angry postures, and name-calling. It was Tom’s way or no way at all. Glib!

One positive thing about this interview: At least the journo didn’t ask her any questions about her romance with Brad Pitt. Juliette has to field that stuff every time she promotes a project. Maybe that topic would have been preferable to Juliette throwing out a conspiracy theory on the media and CO$. She tried to sound rational by using the word “conspiratorial,” but that doesn’t make L. Ron Hubbard’s scripture any less loony.

Photos courtesy of WENN