"This is me now" - Brooke Shields on celebrating her milestone birthday
The actor reflects on half a century in the spotlight and her triumph over trauma.
Image credit: Alex Cayley
The actor reflects on half a century in the spotlight and her triumph over trauma.
Brooke Shields has been in the spotlight almost all her life, starring in her first television advert for Ivory Soap at 11 months, photographed naked for Playboy when she was ten and at 15 becoming the face of Calvin Klein jeans.
She hit the headlines in her adult life too. She was raped by a film executive; had a two-year marriage to Andre Agassi; and was publicly attacked by Tom Cruise for taking antidepressants for postnatal depression.
But instead of being messed up she's like any other middle-aged working mum.
In her exclusive interview with Saga Magazine, we asked her how she managed to avoid the fate of so many child stars, but also emerged so relatable?
“Everybody’s shocked. They want me to be a s***show," she told us. "The other day [fashion designer] Diane von Fürstenberg said to me ‘I love the way you’re never angry, bitter or a victim.’
"I guess we’ve seen so many young actors who didn’t come out all right because they didn’t have the tools to cope with fame that I insisted on.”
Brooke has just written her latest book, Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed To Get Old and she says she has to confront the disappointment of strangers who can't accept she has aged.
“There’s an idea these huge figures in popular culture die young," she says. "We never saw the Marilyns or the James Deans grow older. I’m not comparing myself to such icons, but we freeze people at certain eras in their lives and so to some the idea I don’t look the same as when I was 15 is unacceptable.
“Just the other day, a stranger commented on my Instagram: ‘I really wish you looked the way you looked when you were younger.’
"When I meet people, I want to say, ‘This is me now. Do you want to get it out of your system? Then we can have a conversation.’”
“I never bought into it,” she says. “I avoided it at all costs. I didn’t hate the way I looked but I didn’t appreciate it either, I just buried my head in the sand. I didn’t want to know.
“I wasn’t in the womb programming the system to my advantage. Two people had come together who looked a certain way and I didn’t want to take any of the credit for it.
So I was like, ‘I’m going to find my brain and use it. I’m going to be athletic. I’m going to do all these things I actually can control. Because I cannot control the way I look.’”
The media was highly critical of her mother Teri allowing her daughter to play such sexualised roles. Brooke always insisted she wasn’t traumatised, but after Teri's death in 2012, aged 79, Brooke admitted her mother was “a narcissist”.
“I always believed if Mum ceased to exist, I’d cease to exist," she says. "But in reality, the inverse happened, and I found a freedom. When it’s your mum, you want her approval, no matter what they are, it’s primal, and when she was alive that was always a preoccupation.
"But when she died my attention went back on to me and doing what I wanted to do."
Brooke has talked about trauma that many others would have kept private. In the recent Disney+ documentary Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields she described being raped in her twenties.
Now, in her book, she reveals how after gynaecological surgery she underwent in her early fifties, she woke up in hospital to have the male surgeon inform her that he’d also ‘tightened’ and ‘rejuvenated’ down there, clearly expecting her to be delighted.
“Maybe it’s too shocking for some people, but I put it out there because anything to do with the biology of a female is taboo and we need to demystify these topics and take away the shame from them,” she says.
“I was given a procedure I didn’t ask for – that’s against the law, but I was too embarrassed at the time to make a fuss. But we can’t overlook these things, we need to force these conversations out into the open.”
Having dreaded turning 50, she’s excited about this year’s big birthday on 31 May.
“I don’t feel 60, so I don’t have any hang-ups," she says. "After this, it’s going to go into reverse. I’m going to look forward to milestone birthdays, like I looked forward to turning 18 or 21 or into double digits.
“As long as my health is good, there’s just going to be more fun to celebrate.”
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