And speaking of entertainment industry professionals who demonstrate their allegiance one way but play a different tune when asked, Seven Pounds star Will Smith has told Fox 411 columnist Roger Friedman that he’s “not a Scientologist” but has told Access Hollywood that “the ideas of the Bible are 98 percent the same ideas of Scientology, 98 percent the same ideas of Hinduism and Buddhism.”
Yesterday Friedman reported that just-released tax returns for Smith’s charitable foundation “show that he and wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, gave $1.3 million in donations last year to a variety of religious, civic and arts groups,” but included in this package was “a combined $122,500 to the Church of Scientology, to wit: $67,500 to the New York Rescue Workers Detoxication Fund, $50,000 to the group’s Celebrity Center in Hollywood and $5,000 to ABLE, another Scientology offshoot.”
Friedman adds that Smith and his wife “have also supported a private school called New Village Academy they opened this fall in suburban Los Angeles that uses Scientology learning concepts.”