Tim Pocock thought he was getting help. Instead, his mum had set a trap.

Australian actor Tim Pocock was just 23 when he was cast as young Cyclops in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, landing in Hollywood opposite Hugh Jackman. Others will know him best from his role as Ethan in Dance Academy. But behind the glitz and glamour, was a young man living a lie that was slowly destroying him.

Tim grew up shaped by the strict influence of his devoutly Catholic mother. At 15, he started at Redfield College in Sydney, a school with links to the controversial, secretive religious group Opus Dei. There, surrounded by rigid religious doctrine that condemned his very identity, he fought desperately to hide the truth about his sexuality.

Opus Dei is a small but powerful organisation within the Catholic Church known for its secrecy and conservative teachings. Some people are quick to label it a cult. For Tim, it was his prison — the only "normal" he'd ever known.

"Until I started getting success in the entertainment industry and meeting a broader spectrum of humans, and I started to realise that my upbringing was maybe not quite as normal as I thought it was," he told Kate Langbroek on Mamamia's No Filter.

"The first 18 years of my life were very much unchecked by reality."

But first, listen to Tim Pocock's conversation with Kate Langbroek on No Filter.

His gay awakening began in church, where he discovered his first crush — an altar boy in his local parish.

"It was such an innocent attraction," he said.

"I just enjoyed looking at him. And I kind of realised, 'Oh, that's how the women in the movies that I watch look at men. I think I'm not meant to be looking at him like that.' So it was already this thing that I didn't understand, but made me feel like there was some sort of barrier between me and maybe how I was meant to be."

At Redfield College, Tim was trapped in a suffocating fishbowl of just 30 students in his cohort.

"It really was this very tight-knit insular world where everyone knows absolutely everyone, and everybody's business and all of that," he said.

The religious group's approach to sexuality was strict.

"It is a Godlike thing that they are doing to help someone who might be different to no longer be different," Tim explained.

"Where they see something as an act of charity or mercy or helping someone by helping them to stop being themselves, ultimately ends up being something that hurts mental health and is only seen by the person experiencing it as manipulation."

Watch a snippet of Tim on No Filter. Post continues below.

While other boys played cricket and rugby, Tim was smaller, different — drawn to opera singing. He became a walking target.

"Even though they had no clue that I actually was gay, they decided," he said.

Tim hadn't even understood his own sexuality yet.

"I liked looking at boys. That's all that I knew," he said.

"It felt like a disease that maybe puberty would cure… But it didn't."

Tim in his Redfield uniform, age 7. Image: Supplied.

A decade of hell.

The bullying was savage and relentless for 10 years. It poisoned even his greatest joy: opera singing at the Sydney Opera House.

"I felt like I was living two lives at once," he said.

"By day, I was at school and really not enjoying myself at all, and feeling really miserable... Then at nighttime, I'm on stage in front of 1000s of people, performing, singing, dancing, getting standing ovations.

"It didn't feel real. Especially because what I was enjoying about life was the thing that was actually making me the target during the daytime."

Every morning, Tim woke up begging God to cure him. Every night, he went to bed terrified of eternal damnation.

"We're taught that sin will cast you into hell," he said.

"I didn't make the choice to be gay… If I had a choice about it, I would have preferred to have been 'normal' because then I wouldn't have to be carrying this huge ball and chain with me everywhere that I go."

Tim felt utterly alone, unable to turn to his mother for fear of her reaction.

"I think she definitely knew. She would never talk about it outright," he said.

"She'd always sort of just try and course correct; don't sway your hips so much, maybe try and lower your voice when you're talking…

"But it was sort of such a shameful thing that you don't bring it up. So it was just like this elephant."

Growing up, Tim loved opera singing. Image: Supplied.

The unspoken fight exploded when Tim's mother discovered gay pornography in his room.

"I came home from work, and she had torn every page out of the magazine individually, and had laid them all across the dining room table like a tablecloth," Tim said.

"My dad was sitting at the kitchen counter, not saying anything, just looking down. And my mum was standing there. She was furious. And she kept saying, like, 'Is this who you are? Is this what you have become?'"

Tim's world tilted.

"In my head, I was thinking, 'What do you mean? What I've become?' This is, this is who I've always been.'"

Tim was a nominee for the Heath Ledger Scholarship in 2014. Image: Supplied.

Tim's casting in X-Men at 23 should have been a pure triumph. Instead, a week after filming wrapped, his world shattered: his mother had stage four ovarian cancer.

"I came crashing down to earth very quickly after having that sort of career success, and then sort of the next few years, as I continued to act… she was just in and out of cancer treatments," he recalled.

Then came another devastating blow: Tim discovered his father was having an affair with his mum's cousin.

"They didn't know that I had found out, and I didn't tell mum. I made the choice not to tell her she was still battling the cancer, and I thought her body is literally breaking right now. I'm not going to be the one that breaks her heart, too," he said.

The hypocrisy was crushing.

"It angered me, because (I) carried so much guilt about who I was as a person… and just the hypocrisy of knowing that two people who were part of that holier than thou, judgemental community… were going off and doing something that was, to me, actually wrong," he said.

Tim as Scott Summers in X-Men. Image: 20th Century Fox.

The ultimate betrayal.

At 26, Tim was drowning in secrets and grief when his dying mother suggested therapy. He saw it as salvation.

He was walking into a trap.

"I thought, 'Fantastic, this is actually a great opportunity for me, because I don't get to talk to anyone about being gay and how that makes me feel. I haven't been able to talk to anyone about how my dad's affair makes me feel'," he said.

The plaque by the door read: "Catholic psychologist." Tim's blood ran cold.

"When I get in there, he tells me that he's part of Opus Dei. And that he specialises in hypnotherapy for addictions, cigarettes, alcohol, or homosexuality. And then he kept bringing up all these occurrences of his successful hypnotisms that have cured people of same-sex attractions."

What followed was what Tim describes as "psychological rape".

"Someone is essentially taking you out of your own mind, where you're not in control of yourself. It's sort of like a roofie, so that they can then penetrate your mind, against your wishes, and you become a puppet on their string," he said.

"Even though I'd spent my whole life praying the gay away and wanting to be changed, there was something so insidious about the tactics used in this occasion."

For his dying mother's sake, Tim played along.

"Her months, her days were numbered," he said. "I thought, 'I'll just play the part'."

But something inside him had snapped.

"I felt like I was living two lives at once," Tim Pocock recalled. Image: Supplied.

Death and abandonment.

On January 4, 2012, Tim's mother died, believing her son was fundamentally broken.

"It's such a shame that she passed away with me knowing that that's what she was thinking of me. "

Despite the damage she caused, Tim understood her motivation.

"Her beliefs were very extreme, but to her, what she was trying to do was to save my eternal soul," he said.

"This was bigger than life and death. This was heaven and hell, and she was doing everything from a very loving place to ensure, in her mind, the ultimate best for me."

But the losses weren't over. Tim's sister — his closest ally —delivered the final blow.

"I did come out to my sister, and it was very apparent right after that I was no longer welcome in her house," he said.

"We've tried many times over the years to sort of bury hatchets, but the wounds are a bit too deep."

That rejection destroyed him.

"In the space of 18 months, my mum was dead, my dad was married to my godmother… and now I don't have the sister that I always thought I had in my life, and so I just I felt out of control, and I felt like I had no foundations," Tim said.

Tim speaking at a press conference in NSW advocating against conversion therapy. Image: Supplied.

Today, Tim lives openly with a loving partner. But the scars remain.

"There's always going to be those twangs of doubt, and always those little moments of fear of like… 'Am I now a vocal spokesperson for Satan, because I've written a book encouraging people to be themselves?'," he said.

"Ultimately, you get to a point where you have those demons, but you just put them in the corner and you tell them to be quiet."

Tim's a vocal advocate for LGBTQI+ rights and helped criminalise conversion therapy in NSW. His new book, The Truth Will Set You Free: Growing Up Gay in Opus Dei, is his weapon against the silence that nearly killed him.

"I was so reminded of how voiceless I felt when I was going through it, and what I needed when I was younger, and that was someone to stand up for me because I wasn't able to stand up for myself because it was impossible," he said.

"So I thought I'm in a position where I get to be that voice now, and it would be irresponsible of me not to do so… I've pretty much written this book for my younger self."

Feature image: Supplied.