It’s been decades, the wounds have never healed.
Actress Brooke Shields (57) became famous overnight with her teenage role in “The Blue Lagoon”. She was only 14 years old then. But the sudden rise in Hollywood also had its downsides.
The New Yorker opens up for the first time in a new documentary (Brooke Shields: Pretty Baby, coming to Hulu in April) about perhaps the most traumatic moment of her life: Shields was sexually abused more than 30 years ago. The culprit: a high-profile Hollywood producer.
“Everything comes together in the documentary, it’s a miracle I’m still alive,” said the “Blue Lagoon” star in an interview „People“-Store.
Brooke Shields in 1980 in The Blue Lagoon opposite Christopher Atkins
In January, she revealed the crime for the first timethat happened to her. She had never spoken about it in public before. “No one will believe me,” she thought at the time. “People didn’t believe stories like that back then. I thought I would never be able to work again,” Shields said.
She is still silent about who is said to have mistreated her. The crime is said to have happened after she graduated from Princeton University, which she attended in the 1980s.
Shields was already a name in Hollywood thanks to The Blue Lagoon. But the next role was a long time coming. So, in her mid-twenties, Brooke would have had dinner with an influential producer, after which he would have taken her to a hotel room. Supposedly to call her a cab there.
The actress says that the man attacked her there. “I didn’t fight back,” says Shields. “I was just frozen.”
In her documentary, Brooke details the horror that took place behind closed doors. “It was like a struggle. I was afraid I would choke on air,” the actress said in the film. “I was just like, ‘Stay alive and get out of here.'”
Out of shame, she blamed herself: “I said to myself: ‘I shouldn’t have done that? Why did I go up with him? I shouldn’t have had a drink with that meal.’”
Shields is now considered a confident and strong woman
Will she still report her unknown rapist? That remains open. At the time, she only confided in the trauma to one person: the author and security expert Gavin de Becker (68), with whom Shields is a close friend.
He also has his say in the documentary. “Not only did she survive, she thrived and became this wise, beautiful spirit who helped so many people through his honesty and courage,” says de Becker of Shields.
Brooke Shields has had numerous roles in her career, but not in the big films. The guest appearances in television series such as “The Muppet Show”, “Two and a Half Men” and “The Simpsons” are particularly memorable.
After her marriage to ex-tennis pro Andre Agassi (52), Shields has been married to screenwriter Chris Henchy (58) for over 20 years and has two children with him.
