Brooke Shields got emotional during an interview in which she questioned why her mother let her star in intimate scenes when she was just eleven years old.
Forty years later, the star is reflecting on the impact her first major role in a movie had on her.
Now, Shields is the daughter of Teri Shields, who knew she always wanted her daughter to be a star. Reportedly, she decided when Brooke was just 5 days old that she wanted her to be involved in show business.
Her modelling career began when she was just eleven months old, and throughout her childhood she became one of the biggest child models in the world, even becoming Vogue’s youngest ever cover star aged just fourteen.
One of Shields’ most iconic images is her in a Calvin Klein advert, where she was also aged fourteen. In the advert, she says the iconic yet controversial tagline: “You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.”
However, one of the most controversial parts of Shields’ childhood is her role in the 1978 movie Pretty Baby, where she played Violet, a child who had been abused and forced into pro********n. She was just eleven years old when filming this movie.
Less than 2 years later, she starred in The Blue Lagoon, where she starred alongside Christopher Atkins. Shields was just fourteen then, and Atkins was eighteen, but that didn’t stop producers from attempting to cajole the 2 into a relationship.
“They wanted us so desperately to fall in love with each other,” she said, via UNILAD. “I did not react well being forced into feeling anything. I hadn’t even kissed anybody by that age.”
The model revealed to Drew Barrymore that the director has since tried to contact her.
“I saw [Kleiser’s] name on my phone, and I was like, ‘Oh, what do I do?’ and I let it go to voicemail,” Shields said, via The Independent. “Because I was like, ‘I want to see what the tone is.’ He wants to chat. I don’t know about what, but I don’t feel like bringing any of it back up again.”
She added: “It’s not about that. It was about these males needing me to be in a certain category to serve their story, and it never was about me, it was not protective of me. It was fun and loving at times, but I was just there. I was a pawn, I was a piece, I was a commodity.”
Shields further opened up about her experience in the Hulu documentary, Brooke Shields: Pretty Baby. In the documentary, Shields discusses how she was s**ualised at such a young age, and how her mother was complicit in this.
“I don’t know why she thought it was all right. I don’t know,” she said.
Teri, Brooke’s mother, died of dementia back in 2021, and is only now finding the strength to speak out about her experiences.
The documentary is available to stream now on Disney+.
