Content warning: This story includes descriptions of sexual abuse that may be distressing to some readers.
Actress, model and child star Brooke Shields has shared her horrifying story of alleged sexual assault through her new documentary Pretty Baby.
A victim of sexualisation from the age of 11, Shields has openly discussed Hollywood’s sick objectification of young girls in the past but now she’s putting the spotlight on the rape she says she lived through in her 20s.
Watch a clip of Brooke Shields talking to Variety below. The full interview can be found here. Post continues after video.
Entertainment Weekly reported the incident occurred after Shields graduated from Princeton in 1987 just as she was navigating a lull in her career after its early success. They go on to report that Shields had organised a dinner with a man, still unidentified, who was in a position to help her get work.
Page Six alleges that post-dinner, the man convinced then 20-year-old Shields to wait for a taxi from his hotel room.
“I go up to the hotel room, and he disappears for a while,” she’s quoted from her documentary.
Shields then describes entertaining herself with a pair of binoculars she finds in the room only to be shocked to see the man return completely naked.
“I put the binoculars down and he’s right on me. Just like, was wrestling,” she then explains how she was too terrified to fight back.
“I was afraid I’d get choked out or something. So, I didn’t fight that much. I didn’t. I just absolutely froze. I thought one ‘No’ should’ve been enough, and I just thought, ‘Stay alive and get out,’ and I just shut it out.”
“God knows I knew how to be disassociated from my body. I’d practised that... I went down in the elevator, and I got my own cab. I just cried all the way to my friend's apartment."
Shields is of course referencing her long and difficult career in Hollywood and the documentary's namesake film from 1987, Pretty Baby. A film that had an 11-year-old Shields playing a child prostitute with nude scenes shot alongside a then 29-year-old Keith Carradine.
At 14 Shields found herself filming nude scenes for Blue Lagoon, at 15 the actress was cast in the highly sexual Endless Love.
Again at 15 years old Shields starred in the infamously racy Calvin Klein ad that had a child saying the likes of “You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.”
Shields has openly discussed the trauma from these roles as a child, talking to Drew Barrymore on how she “felt so taken advantage of in so many ways” according to ET Canada.
Even with this history, Shields found it hard to process what happened to her in her 20s, admitting to blaming herself for the assault in her documentary.
“He said to me, ‘I can trust you and I can’t trust people.’ It’s so cliche, it’s practically pathetic… I believed somehow I put out a message and that was how the message was received. I drank wine at dinner. I went up to the room. I just was so trusting.”
Shields sat with that on her mind for years until she had enough and wrote a letter to her attacker, which was left completely ignored. This prompted a change in the actress.
“I just threw my hands up and said, ‘You know what, I refuse to be a victim' because this is something that happens no matter who you are and no matter what you think you’re prepared for or not.”
“I wanted to erase the whole thing from my mind and body and just keep on the path I was on. The system had never once come to help me. So, I just had to get stronger on my own.”
2023’s Pretty Baby mostly focuses on these important stories that Shields feels ready to share, but the actress also touches on her past feud with Tom Cruise in 2005.
Shields is an advocate for education on postpartum depression, having suffered from it herself and in 2005 she released her book Down Came The Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression.
In that same year Tom Cruise shared dangerous opinions on psychiatric medication, speaking on The Today Show, News.com reported Cruise stating: “I’ve never agreed with psychiatry, ever. Before I was a Scientologist, I never agreed with psychiatry and then when I started studying the history of psychiatry, I started realising more and more why I didn’t agree with psychiatry.”
Toting psychiatric drugs as 'dangerous', Cruise found himself in some hot water as Shields publicly hit back in The New York Times directly addressing his statements. “I WAS hoping it wouldn’t come to this... I feel compelled to speak not just for myself but also for the hundreds of thousands of women who have suffered from postpartum depression.”
"Comments like those made by Tom Cruise are a disservice to mothers everywhere. To suggest that I was wrong to take drugs to deal with my depression and that instead I should have taken vitamins and exercised shows an utter lack of understanding about postpartum depression and childbirth in general."
Cruise reportedly apologised after her statement was published.
Pretty Baby premiered at the Sundance Film Festival over the weekend and it is yet unknown when it will be available in Australia.
If this post brings up any issues for you, or if you just feel like you need to speak to someone, please call 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) – the national sexual assault, domestic and family violence counselling service. It doesn’t matter where you live, they will take your call and, if need be, refer you to a service closer to home.
Feature Image: Getty
Top Comments