Brooke Shields was left “broken” trying to keep her late alcoholic mum Teri Shields alive.
Brooke Shields was left “broken” trying to keep her alcoholic mum Teri Shields alive
The 57-year-old ‘Endless Love’ actress has opened up about how her mother’s drinking drained her while growing up on her new documentary ‘Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields’, and went into more harrowing detail about her traumatic upbringing during an interview on ‘Today’.
She said about Teri, who was Brooke’s manager until 1995 until her addiction forced the actress to fire her: “As a daughter, I was so busy trying to keep her alive and protect her against the world.
“I was in that role with her and she was so broken, and even as a child, I had, not pity, in a bad way, but respectful pity, if there’s such a thing.
“I was like, ‘What a shame, you have demons and I don’t want you to.’
She also told how she had staged the first intervention for Teri when Brooke was only 13.
But she insisted about how the other struggles she has gone through made her the woman she is today: “I would only erase my mother's alcoholism, because that was such a constant source of agony for me.
“But all the other stuff put me in a position now, albeit quite a few years later... to be like, ‘Yeah, bring it on. You cannot throw me. I am here and I’m going to keep going.’”
Brooke said in her Hulu documentary – which also details how she was raped by a film executive at his hotel room in her 20s – “You never know what to expect with an alcoholic.
“It wasn’t abusive, but it was emotionally abusive because I felt sort of abandoned every time she wasn’t herself.”
Brooke’s mum Teri, who died in 2012 aged 79, agreed to stop her drinking, but Brooke said it didn’t last beyond a few weeks.
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