Brooke Shields' PEOPLE cover in 2023.Photo: Michael Schwartz
In the two-part mini-series, Shields, now 58, also revealed, for the first time, details of a sexual assault she experienced at the hands of a prominent Hollywood executive more than three decades ago, and the impact it had on all parts of her life.
“I always kept going, like a bull in a china shop.… I will not be defeated,” theBlue LagoonactresstoldPEOPLE,in an interview last year.
Below is PEOPLE’s cover story from the archive.
At 12 years old,Brooke Shieldswas already a subject of global fascination.
Brooke Shields People Magazine Cover in 2023.Michael Schwartz
Says Brooke: “From the get-go, I was always portraying somebody else, and I did it to a tee. A movie person, a model person, the daughter to my mom: They all existed in silos. And when you do that for a long enough period of time, it’s hard to know who you really are.”
Unfiltered, upbeat and funny as she talks about her past, Brooke notes, “You see it all together, and it’s a miracle I survived.” She hopes sharing her story will help women feel less alone, “because it’s about agency and finding your voice,” she reflects. “There’s so much stuff that we keep inside.”
Brooke Shields posing for PEOPLE’s cover shoot in 2023.Michael Schwartz
Seeing her experience anew through the eyes of her two daughters —Rowan, 19, and Grier, 16— was another revelation.
“They had this mix of protectiveness for me and anger towards a world that could exploit young women,” she says. “They brought up [the edgy HBO drama]Euphoria, saying, ‘The girls are 24 years old playing 17, but you were that age.’ Rowan turned it around and said, ‘Would you let me do it?’ My answer was no. But my mom let me. Was that right? Was that wrong? It was a different era. It made me face the unfairness of it more honestly than I think I could afford to emotionally at the time. I can’t undo it. That was my trajectory.”
“It didn’t make me uncomfortable,” she says. “I got to wear makeup and have red lips. It was just being a princess, like playacting on a creative stage.”
At 15, she starred inThe Blue Lagoon, about teens stranded on an island. “Even though I was playing a character, they wanted to tell the story of my sexual awakening,” Brooke recalls.
This time, her mom insisted on a body double. “Why was [nudity] okay for an 11-year-old but not a 15-year-old?” Brooke asks. Looking back, she calls it “a paradox my mom created, allowing this projection and then shielding me from it and wanting to keep me a little girl. It was definitely arrested development.”
Brooke Shields in 1978.Gilbert TOURTE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty
Gilbert TOURTE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty
A year later on the set ofEndless Love, when director Franco Zeffirelli wanted Brooke to show “ecstasy” in a scene about her first sexual experience, she thought, “I don’t know what that is.” So he twisted her toe to get a reaction. “I thought, ‘Really? How about directing?’ ” Still, she says, “The reason why I was safe was because the minute they said ‘Cut,’ I would prove to everybody that I was not that character.”
Those roles — plus the provocative Calvin Klein ads made when she was 15 — were shockingly used against her in 1981, when photographer Gary Gross tried to sell nude photos of Brooke he’d taken (with her mother’s permission) when she was 10. When Brooke and her mom sued to stop him, Gross’s lawyers argued that the photos couldn’t damage her reputation because she had made a career as a “provocative child-woman … the Lolita of her generation.”
They lost the case—along with any privacy Brooke had left. Talk show hosts regularly asked the teenager about her dating and sex life. “My response was just not to have one,” she recalls, “so then I could answer honestly, and it was a non-point.”
But the blueprint had been set. “I’ve always had a sense of disassociation from my body, from my sexuality,” she says. “I was mostly a cover girl, so it’s all here [indicating from her neck up], and it was easier just to shut myself off.”
While a student at Princeton in the mid-’80s (she was advised to skip college and “go straight to Hollywood,” but her mom said no), Brooke fell in love with a classmate, actorDean Cain. “He was just mouthwatering. That should have been a delicious time for me of reveling in it because I was in love,” she says.
The first time they had sex, she ran from the room afterward. “It was as if I was paralyzed from shame,” she says. “Nobody should go through that. I even told Dean a few years ago. I apologized. I said, ‘I’m sorry for you, and I’m really sorry for me. It was such a burden to carry.’ ”
After graduating in 1987, Brooke struggled to find acting work and hit “the lowest point” of her career. One evening she had a dinner meeting with a Hollywood executive. “I thought I was getting a movie, a job,” she recalls. Afterward, he suggested she call a cab from his hotel room. There, he sexually assaulted her. “I didn’t fight,” she says in the documentary. “I just froze.”
She told no one except de Becker, a security specialist to whom she’d grown close. “Brooke lived so long in the judgment of others, so it was heartbreaking to see her judge herself,” he says. “It has been inspiring to see her integrate the truth as she has.”
Says Brooke: “It’s taken me a long time to process it. I’m more angry now than I was able to be then.” She chooses not to name the man, “because then it will be about him,” she explains. “And no one gets to own my truth but me.”
Brooke Shields and Dean Cain in November 1995.Ron Galella/Getty
In the years that followed, Brooke kept pushing forward, as she says, “like a bull in a china shop.” She made her Broadway debut inGreasein 1994 and showed her knack for comedy in the sitcomSuddenly Susan.
Her first marriage, toAndre Agassiin 1997, helped her “emotionally separate” from her mom, but she got swept up into the tennis star’s life, rather than carving out her own, and they divorced within two years. Says Brooke: “We should have just been friends.”
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Therapy helped. “For 35 years I’ve been going to the same therapist,” she says. “I went today. When we met, I sat in her chair, and the first thing I said was, ‘I’m afraid if my mom dies, I’ll die too.’ And she was like, ‘Okay, we have our work cut out for us.’ ” (Teri died of complications of dementia in 2012; Brooke keeps her ashes close, in a silver urn on her living room bar.)
Laughter has buoyed her as well, especially when shared with comedy writer and directorChris Henchy, whom she married in 2001. “Every time I finish with my therapist, Chris is like, ‘Are you fixed? You’re good? We’re good?’” she says with a smile. “He’s good at leveling me.”
In 2021, Brooke launched her online community and wellness brand, Beginning Is Now, which could also be her motto. “It’s the biggest, most frightening thing I’ve ever done,” says Brooke, who often films informal videos from her downtown Manhattan apartment. “The goal was to ignite a spark in women over 40 to revel in what they’ve done and be excited for this next beautiful chapter.”
Next up, she’s filming a Netflix romcom,Mother of the Bride, alongsideBenjamin Brattand beginning college tours for Grier. “The one thing that has saved me from everything is telling my truth,” she says.
And she’s proud to see her daughters do the same: “We have very open discussions. I don’t want them to feel the shame that I lived with for so long. I want them to feel celebrated.”
In turn, they celebrate her: “They say ‘Mom, you’ve got a good butt’ and ‘Mom, you should show your midriff.’ I’m not there yet—but ask me after a suntan and some crunches!”
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go torainn.org.
source: people.com
