Brooke Shields is one of those actresses who has not only made a big mark in the film industry, but also in the world of fashion. The American actress combined the big screen with the catwalks practically since her childhood, a childhood that was marked by success but also by dark episodes: abuse. The actress revealed earlier this year that she had been raped in her early days in Hollywood, and in a recent interview with Variety she has opened up about the sexualization she received as a child.
There are many awards and recognitions that the Endless Love actress has received. In recent months, she has come off creating her own documentary about her, Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields, coming from ABC News Studios. In the documentary, she addresses her trajectory in the world of cinema, as well as the sexualization that she suffered when she was just a child. The documentary reveals one of the hardest episodes: the rape she suffered at the beginning of her career in the industry.
Although she decided to recount this dark moment in her life, Brooke has kept the identity of her attacker a secret, but said she tracked down the man – whom she knew – shortly after graduating from university, believing that he had shown up at a work meeting to discuss his participation in a casting for a new film. The man took her back to her hotel, saying that he wanted to call a taxi for her from her room. Instead, he went to the bathroom before going out naked and raping her, as she herself recounted.
Recently, the actress has given an interview to Variety magazine in which she has spoken about the sexualization she received in her youth, comparing it with the situation that women are going through today. Shields wants to be an example for the next generations that come in the film industry, an industry that today continues to encounter cases of sexualization, machismo and even sexual abuse.
She suffered it with Pretty Baby, at only 12 years old. Three years later, she was a teenage sex symbol in Endless Love, where she did not feel at all comfortable, despite what she showed on camera. She has thus recounted it in the aforementioned interview. “I’m an actress. I was playing parts,” she says. “Behind the scenes was the real problem,” she continued to say.
“With all these interviews, it was so interesting that people were much more obsessed with the subject of the film: ‘How can I play a prostitute?’, but no one had a problem with the way they addressed me regarding the press or the director’s treatment of a girl”, he expressed. Regarding that time, she Brooke assures that she was “very dominated by men”. She now intends to raise her voice to avoid such cases in the present, although she admits that things are different today.
“It was a very different era for me, and there was a lot of acceptance that wouldn’t be accepted today, and I appreciate that that’s now the dialogue that’s taking place. By broadening the scope of who the creatives actually create these movies, I think there will be more appreciation. and understanding of the nuances of what it means to be a woman,” she continued.
Unlike today, at that time the actress felt that she could not grow. “My biggest problem at the time was that they didn’t allow me to grow as a talent. I didn’t have to. I was pretty, I showed up, I had a good work ethic. I did what was needed from me. I was a box office, and that was it. And that, I think, is changing… It’s hard to put it into words, I think that not being able to grow and being taught was what bothered me the most because I was capable of more”, he sentenced.
