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There was a frenzied span in the early ’80s when Brooke Shields was arguably the most famous, most talked-about, most gushed-over female in the universe, a Kardashian-times-10 megastar. She was an Ivory soap baby at 11 months and continued to model for the agency of Eileen Ford, who created a children’s division just to bring on Shields. After a small part in a horror movie, she was cast at age 11 in her second film, as a child prostitute in Louis Malle’s Pretty Baby, where her nude scene sparked outrage. At 14, she became the youngest model to nab the cover of Vogue; starred (shipwrecked and scantily clad) in the titillating blockbuster The Blue Lagoon; and twisted her body into a pretzel in those sassy, controversial Calvin Klein jean ads. The following year, 1981, she graced the cover of Time as “The ’80s Look” and, just before her 16th birthday, embodied unbridled teen passion in Franco Zeffirelli’s initially X-rated film, Endless Love — another box-office bonanza.
“She was just being projected into some other stratosphere,” recalls childhood friend and actress Laura Linney, in the illuminating 2023 documentary Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields. “She represented a femininity of that time. There was a sense she was the woman of the future.”
According to Brooke’s mother, Teri, a former model and makeup artist, the stratosphere was always her daughter’s fate. “She looked at me and said, ‘This baby is going to be a star!’ ” Brooke says, with a wistful smile. “This baby was going to be her savior.”
We’re sitting in one of Brooke’s favorite cafés, blocks from the Greenwich Village home she shares with her husband, Chris Henchy, and her two daughters, Rowan, 20, and Grier, 17. Sipping alternately from a steaming mug of bone broth and a mysterious frothy green concoction, Brooke is analyzing her life and career like a therapist — in fact, she just got off the phone with one, she tells me, so she’s in the mood for a self-reflective interview.
At 58, it’s all still there — those fluffy eyebrows, the pillowy lips, that beautiful cascading mane of chestnut-colored hair. Other than a little crinkle around the eyes when she energetically emphasizes an important point in conversation, Brooke remains hauntingly as we remember her from those glossy magazine covers and 50-foot movie screens.
But she is not that sexy woman-child today. Surprisingly, Brooke insists she never really was. “That world was fake to me,” she says. “It wasn’t my real life. It wasn’t me.”
Brooke began dismantling that image in 1983 when she ditched superstardom to attend Princeton University. But the postgraduation years were a dark period, she says. A fickle Hollywood had forgotten all about the woman of the future. That bleak period coincided with her moving on from her overprotective, alcoholic manager-mom (who divorced Brooke’s businessman father, Frank, when Brooke was 5 months old) and was capped off with a sexual assault by a powerful film executive, a secret she revealed publicly for the first time in 2023.
Picking herself up from all that trauma, Brooke pivoted. In 1994, she honed her thespian chops on Broadway, singing and hoofing in Grease and later Chicago and Cabaret, winning over critics there too. Her 1996 guest appearance on Friends as Joey Tribbiani’s stalker fan drew raves, and she gravitated to a new niche — comedy. Her sitcom, Suddenly Susan, allowed Brooke to be her funny, dorky, real self, and America liked that: She received two Golden Globe nods and, in 1997, a People’s Choice Award. “It wasn’t like she became funny,” says Susan costar Judd Nelson in the Pretty Baby doc. “No, that was always there. We just didn’t get to see it.”
She found love, marrying tennis great Andre Agassi in 1997. The union only lasted two years, but she’s not regretful. “I think we get into different relationships for different reasons,” she says thoughtfully.
And if you do believe in fate — and real-life Hollywood meet-cutes — she met writer-producer-director Henchy (Spin City, Entourage) soon after, when her dog wandered off on a studio lot and Henchy returned him. They married in 2001.
“He makes me laugh,” she says. “I think I always knew that I needed solid and normal. And he’s a very, very good dad. He goes to every basketball game, every volleyball game. And the kids love being around him too.”
On cue, Brooke whips out her iPhone to proudly show photos and videos of Rowan and Grier. “They’re very old-souled children,” she says adoringly. “Personality-wise, Rowan’s like a golden retriever puppy and Grier is like an Abyssinian cat.”
At home, she is a down-to-earth mother and wife: While Chris cooks dinner, she likes to relax, watching TV, doing puzzles, needlepointing. But she also stays busy outside the home, particularly with her nest about to empty. She is starring in a rom-com, Mother of the Bride, streaming on Netflix in May; working on a book about aging; and launching a digital platform, Beginning Is Now, to provide beauty and wellness advice to women over age 40.
“There are so many moving pieces,” Brooke says, taking a deep breath. Here is her side of the story.
What was it like to be so famous as a tween and teen?
It only became clear to me how famous I was when we went out. If we went to Studio 54 or the Cannes Film Festival, there would be hordes of people and paparazzi screaming my name and sometimes rocking the car, and I’m like, “This is nuts.” It was like facing a firing squad. My mom would say, “You’ve got to get out of the car first. They’re not here to see me.”
Strangers feel close to you, and it can be overwhelming. Suddenly, you’re responsible for every fan’s experience. But because I have zero shared experience with that person, it could be overwhelming, and created a huge, shocking sense of isolation, like, “Oh God, I’m really so far away from everybody.”
But you seemed so mature dealing with all that.
I was a thoughtful kid — I really did see things deeper. And I didn’t want to lose my cool on camera during interviews, because then they win. There was one interview where this woman asked me the same question three times. I finally said to her, “Excuse me, ma’am, but I don’t think you want my answer. Because I keep answering it and you keep asking the same question, wanting a different answer. But I have no other answer because this is my truth.”
I’m also a champion compartmentalizer; it was the only way to stay buoyant. Whenever a director would say “Cut,” I’d go separate, compartmentalize and often just leave — go to my regular school, or to my dad’s, and be in a completely different world.
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