Paul Haggis: The Bad Actor

Want to take acting lessons—from a truly bad actor? If you’re visiting Italy, or live there, now’s your chance.

For the bargain-basement fee of just $350, you can take a three-day acting class in Rome from washed-up screenwriter/producer/director Paul Haggis.

Back in the day before his self-inflicted crash and burn, he made films such as Million Dollar Baby and Crash. But nowadays, he’s infamously known for the more reprehensible aspects of his character.

For Haggis is truly a lesson in self-destructive disaster. His unprincipled and unrestrained sexual proclivities destroyed his marriages, his career and his life.

Haggis’ implosion in that rape case had a secondary redemptive result—it thoroughly discredited the 2015 fictionalized documentary “Going Clear,” director Alex Gibney’s anti-Scientology film, in which Haggis played the protagonist and sanctimonious apostate.

It all culminated in November 2022, when Haggis made international headlines that proclaimed publicist Haleigh Breest had won a $10 million judgment against him for raping her in 2013, when he was 59 and she was 26. The jury awarded Breest $7.5 million in compensatory damages and then tacked on $2.5 million in punitive damages.­

Haggis’ implosion in that rape case had a secondary redemptive result—it thoroughly discredited the 2015 fictionalized documentary Going Clear, director Alex Gibney’s anti-Scientology film, in which Haggis played the protagonist and sanctimonious apostate.

When that jury unanimously found Haggis liable for rape (supported by the testimony of four other victims) they also pronounced his case unbelievable. In short, they found the story he told in court to be a fictional creation.

Actually it was just the latest in a lifetime of deceptions. But Haggis’ biggest lie was the story he told in Going Clear.

It had taken Haggis a while to come up with all the details of the story he created to describe his departure from Scientology. But it was important to him to make it convincing, because it was to be the career springboard designed to pump life into his sagging prospects.

The true story, however, was very different: Haggis, a longtime if marginal member of the Church of Scientology, had committed serial cheating on his wife for years. He tried to play both sides—cultivating associations in the Church to curry favor in Hollywood and advance his career while flouting the ethical standards, such as marital fidelity, expected in the Church.

In the end, after being a Scientologist in name for 35 years, Haggis publicly departed from the Church in 2009.

Here the script undergoes thorough doctoring—i.e., fictionalizing. Haggis announced to the media that he broke away from the Church because it was supportive of California’s Proposition 8, which sought to make same-sex marriage illegal. This was a bald-faced lie, crafted to make him appear to be a principled gay-rights advocate acting in support of his two gay daughters.

The deception was finally exposed by Mark “Marty” Rathbun, Haggis’ then-partner in crime….“Paul Haggis consulted with me every step of the way, on how he should position this and how he should do this,” said Rathbun. “He rode this sort of pro-gay rights wave as a PR vehicle…to paint himself as heroic….And it was critical…to the whole false narrative….Paul Haggis is lying through his teeth,” he concluded.

In fact, as a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization, and by its own firm policy, the Church of Scientology does not engage in political or public policy debates and takes no position on public ballot measures such as Proposition 8. Nor does it discriminate based on sexual orientation.

But Haggis had discovered that an individual Scientologist, acting on his own, had endorsed an online petition in support of Proposition 8, referencing his local Church in San Diego. When Haggis alerted a Church official, the San Diego Church was quickly removed from the petition.

But now, instead of acknowledging the Church’s corrective action, Haggis used the incident to forward his own self-serving agenda. Well knowing that the Church would never take a position on Proposition 8, Haggis insisted the Church make an exception just for him. He used the inevitable refusal to publicly support the measure, as much against Church policy as speaking out against it, as a premise for his “resignation letter” from Scientology in August 2009, which was then “leaked” to the media.

The deception was finally exposed by Mark “Marty” Rathbun, Haggis’ then-partner in crime. An anti-Scientologist, expelled long ago, Rathbun admitted that he had engineered Haggis’ departure story from the Church.

“Paul Haggis consulted with me every step of the way, on how he should position this and how he should do this,” said Rathbun. “He rode this sort of pro-gay rights wave as a PR vehicle…to paint himself as heroic….And it was critical…to the whole false narrative.”

“Paul Haggis is lying through his teeth,” he concluded.

Next, Haggis popped up as a new Scientology critic in a 2011 article in The New Yorker, including the same fictional account of his departure from the religion.

Then it was onto the starring role in Going Clear, but it was all a false front, a ruse designed to keep his name alive in entertainment industry circles.

He reinvented himself, and set off on a new career as a professional anti-Scientology activist and bigot. He became a star of anti-Scientology blogs and documentaries, bad-mouthing the Church that had offered the troubled Haggis unconditional help—help he refused. Instead, he had only been interested in taking advantage of the access to Hollywood luminaries who helped boost his career.

Haggis’ final loss in the rape suit, and the $10 million in damages he now owes—in addition to his already shaky financial status after paying alimony to two ex-wives and significant legal fees—marked the end game, leaving Haggis submerged in debt and swimming for his life.

But Haggis’ unethical lifestyle caught up with him in 2017 when he was sued by publicist Haleigh Breest, accusing him of raping her in 2013.

In the Breest lawsuit, four additional women came forward as support witnesses to testify that Haggis had sexually abused them, too.

In mid-2022, Haggis was attending a film festival in Italy when he was accused by a British woman of sexually assaulting her twice over several days and then dumping her at an airport. He was arrested and detained by Italian police and suffered further reputation damage, before the case was later dismissed by an Italian court.

During the trial for Haggis’ rape of Haleigh Breest, bitter apostate and anti-Scientologist Mike Rinder—who deserted his family and physically attacked his ex-wife, maiming her for life—appeared as a character witness for Haggis.

No surprise that, in the face of the damning testimony by the women against Haggis, Rinder intoned, “He (Haggis) is truly a gentleman. A gentle man, with impeccable manners and a generous heart,” and claimed that Haggis has “championed the rights of women.”

Haggis’ final loss in the rape suit, and the $10 million in damages he now owes—in addition to his already shaky financial status after paying alimony to two ex-wives and significant legal fees—marked the end game, leaving Haggis submerged in debt and swimming for his life.

Public records show he still has not paid the Breest judgment and faces an additional $2.8 million in Breest’s attorney fees. A legal service his attorneys used is going after him for $73,726. He owes his attorneys more than $500,000 and is overdue on $24,000 in maintenance fees for his $2.9 million New York apartment.

His lawyer pleaded when the jury added punitive on top of compensatory damages “He’s not going to be able to pay the judgment you’ve already created. And there’s no way he can pay anything further.”

In fact, Breest has asked the court to force Haggis to sell his New York apartment, charging that Haggis transferred ownership of the apartment and another property to his ex-wife, as well as cash, to avoid paying Breest.

Meanwhile, Haggis started playing for sympathy.

“I’ve spent all the money I have at my disposal,” Haggis whined. “I’ve gutted my pension plan. I’ve lived on loans to pay for this case in a very naïve belief in justice.”

So now Haggis remains in Italy offering acting lessons, dodging American law and Breest’s attempts to collect on the court’s judgment she was awarded and rightfully deserves.

There’s a hint of desperation in Haggis’ emailed ads for his classes, urging students to “reserve your spot soon” because the class “fills up quickly.”

He is a failed bad actor indeed, playing himself in the last sorry scene of his life.

And Gibney? His Going Clear is irreparably tainted for its own egregious inaccuracies and falsehoods, and for its featuring of convicted rapist Paul Haggis.

That’s a wrap.