More shocking Marilyn Manson abuse allegations
Actress Evan Rachel Wood received an Emmy nomination for her role in “Mildred Pierce” — but away from the spotlight, she says, she lived in a constant nightmare.
In the second half of “Phoenix Rising” — a two-part documentary set to air on HBO, beginning March 15, that’s directed by Oscar- and Emmy-nominated filmmaker Amy Berg — Wood, 34, reveals she realized she was pregnant with the baby of her alleged abuser, Marilyn Manson, while working on that 2011 miniseries.
“From the beginning of our relationship, he always had an issue with whatever birth control I was using — and I went through, like, every type to see which one he liked, and he didn’t like any of them, so essentially he didn’t want me using birth control,” Wood says in the film, whose first half premiered during the Sundance Film Festival in January. She claims Manson refused to wear a condom, and using spermicides after intercourse didn’t work.
Wood decided to terminate the pregnancy — and was shocked when Manson demanded she cook him a meal directly after the abortion.
“He flew out for the abortion,” Wood says on camera. “The second it was over it was like, ‘Make me dinner.’ And I remember being like, ‘I’m supposed to be resting — my body has gone through this trauma … there’s aftermath here.’ And he didn’t care.”
The incident nearly drove her to end her own life. At a later, unspecified date, she says, she tried to kill herself.
“I went into the bathroom and I took [a] glass and I shattered it on the floor and just started digging at my wrists as hard as I could,” Wood tells her friend, the artist and activist Illma Gore.
While Wood’s suicide attempt was ultimately unsuccessful, it was a turning point, she says in the film. “When I woke up, I felt different. I feel like whoever I was went to sleep and didn’t wake up that night, and this new version woke up and had to start rebuilding her life. I called my mom and I said, ‘I just tried to kill myself, and I need to go to a hospital, like, immediately.’ ”
Drugged and alone
The “Westworld” actress first identified 53-year-old Manson, whose real name is Brian Warner, as her alleged abuser last February, after previously referring to a traumatic relationship with an anonymous man in the press. “Phoenix Rising” tracks Wood’s decision to go public with his name, which ultimately came in the form of a statement posted on Instagram. In the first part of the documentary, Wood’s explosive claims include Manson forcing her to have sex on camera for his 2007 music video “Heart-Shaped Glasses.”
Wood claims Manson’s abuse was incessant. She alleges that she was forced into isolation inside his Spanish-style Los Angeles home, where she says she was kept in “freezing cold” temperatures and deprived of sleep.
The “True Blood” actress also says she believes Manson drugged her, with everything from meth to sleeping pills.
“This is also when he started raping me in my sleep,” Wood says in the film’s second half. “I’d wake up, I just remember doing the mental math quickly and thinking, ‘Just stay, just stay asleep, don’t move, just don’t move.’ So I would just lie limp and still until it was over, and then I swear to God, he would just fling my leg and walk out of the room.”
More women’s stories
The day that Wood came forward with her charges last year, several other women followed suit — two of whom appear in the film’s second installment. The documentary shows them meeting together in October 2020, along with two former Manson assistants, including Dan Cleary, who had recently posted a viral Twitter thread about how the shock-rocker “turned [Wood] into a different person. He broke her.”
One of the women in the documentary, model Sarah McNeilly, whose own 2021 statement on Instagram included allegations that she was locked in rooms when she was “bad,” says that Manson “threw me up against a wall and had a baseball bat, and said he was gonna smash my f - - king face in.”
The other is Ashley Morgan Smithline, who’s Jewish. In a 2021 Instagram post, she described Manson asking her to bring him Nazi memorabilia home from a…