Alongside many other beloved celebrities like Pamela Anderson and Prince Harry, Brooke Shields is using her platform to tell her story in her own words. In her new Huludocumentary, Pretty Baby, the model and actress offers fans a never-before-seen perspective into her life, her traumatic experiences as a child actor, her relationships, and everything between.
“I was struggling to find my own voice,” Shields recalled in the documentary’s trailer. “I wasn’t told it was important to have agency.” The documentary, out now on Hulu, combines interviews of Shields, other A-list interviews, and clips of the star throughout the years.
“Doing the documentary, you see it all together, and it’s a miracle that I survived,” Shields told People before its release.
Lana Wilson, the documentary’s director, was impressed with Shields’ candor. “Brooke was open, game for anything, fearless. The only concern she voiced at that first meeting was that this wouldn’t be deep enough,” the director told People. “Nothing scares her,” Wilson added. “If something is intimidating or challenging or risky, that means she’s going to want to do it even more.”
Check out some of Shields’ shocking and heartbreaking revelations in Pretty Baby below.
Her First Kiss
In the documentary, Shields talks about her experience acting in the 1978 movie, Pretty Baby. The 11-year-old Shields plays a child prostitute and kisses 29-year-old actor Keith Carradine. Per Shields, that kiss was her very first kiss.
“This is a moment I wanted to feature and unpack because, even if child Brooke was fully cognizant of the role she was playing, and even if she realized that acting was pretend, I can’t help but think: ‘This is an actual 11-year-old girl having to kiss an actual 29-year-old man,’” the movie’s director, Lana Wilson, told Rolling Stone. “That inescapably is real. And the impact of that is real, too. Eleven-year-old Brooke expressed discomfort during the filming of this moment, but that discomfort was not taken seriously by the director.”
Losing Her V-Card
Also in Pretty Baby, Shields revealed she lost her virginity to actor Dean Cain when she was 22. “I wanted to jump into the personal relationship and the love and the commitment,” Brooke said, per Hollywood Life. “The part he was more comfortable with was probably the sexual part and I wasn’t so we had to teach each other about the other.”
Her Sexual Assault
Shields also bravely opened up about being raped by a film executive after she graduated from Princeton University. “He was right on me. It was just like wrestling,” she said, per Evening Standard. “God knows I knew how to be disassociated from my body. I’d practiced that,” she said, adding that her body completely “froze.”
Shields & Michael Jackson
Looking back at past relationships, Shields gave some new intel on her headline-making relationship with Michael Jackson. “We both were quite juvenile in some ways,” Shields said, per TV Insider, adding that he once asked her to get married and adopt a baby with him. At one point, Jackson told the press the two were dating when they weren’t. “I called him and said, ‘What are you doing? I’m actually currently with a boyfriend in New York City!’” she said.
Fax Beginnings
Shields also talked about her relationship with Tennis star Andre Agassi in Pretty Baby. According to Shields, their relationship first started when they communicated via fax while she was filming a project in Africa. “We talked so openly about our fears and being public figures,” she said, per TV Insider. Shields also credited Agassi for helping her return to acting.
Not-So-Friendly Repercussions
In 1996, Shields had a short yet iconic cameo in Friends as Joey’s (Matt LeBlanc) obsessive-fan-turned-date. According to Shields, one scene where she licks LeBlanc’s hands did not go well for her significant other at the time Agassi.
“[Agassi] said, ‘Everybody’s making fun of me. You made a fool of me by that behavior,’” Shields said, per New York Post. Agassi then reportedly “smashed all his trophies” in a fit of rage.
On-Set Dissociations
Shields also recalled her traumatic experience filming the 1981 movie Endless Love, by director Franco Zeffirelli. According to Shields, Zeffirelli at one point twisted her toe during a scene so she could emote “ecstasy” because 15-year-old Shields was too sexually inexperienced at the time. “I was really shut down after that,” she said, per PopSugar. “I thought of myself as just the sort of workhorse. They paid me, I did the thing, they sold it, everybody’s happy. It’s transactional.”
Shields’ Mom Teri
Also in the documentary, Shields talked about her complicated relationship with her mom Teri, who suffered from alcoholism. In 1995, Brooke eventually fired Teri, a decision she said was “the most violent thing” she had ever done, per Pop Sugar.
“Eventually she surfaced, and she just couldn’t believe [it],” Brooke recalled. Per Shields, her mother never truly forgave her.
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