Brooke Shields was raped in her early 20s but kept the attack secret for decades.
Brooke Shields was raped in her early 20s but kept the attack secret for decades
‘The Blue Lagoon’ actress, 57, said she was attacked by a man after they had dinner to discuss her film project dreams, but added she was so traumatised she refused to believe it had happened and has not spoken about it publicly until now.
Mum-of-two Brooke reveals the story in her new documentary ‘Pretty Baby’, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday. (20.01.23)
Along with sharing Brooke’s story, the film delves into the abuse of young and vulnerable people in Hollywood.
The child star – whose earliest roles included sex and nudity – said she went to dinner with her attacker, who she has not named, after she was trying to get back into acting following her 1987 graduation from Princeton university.
She recalled about going to his room after the meal: “I go up to the hotel room, and he disappears for a while.”
Brooke added she picked up a pair of binoculars in the room and was using them to watch some volleyball players out of the window when the man returned naked and launched his assault.
She said: “I put the binoculars down and he’s right on me. Just like, was wrestling.
“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 practiced that.’”
Brooke added she got in a taxi after the rape and cried all the way back to her friend’s apartment.
She said she told her head of security Gavin de Becker about the incident, who told her: “That’s rape.”
But Brooke said she responded she was not “willing to believe that”.
She said she wrote to her attacker years later, but he did not reply.
Brooke added despite his silence she refused to feel like “a victim”, and had “wanted to erase the whole thing from my mind and body and just keep on the path I was on”.
She also said: “The system had never once come to help me. So, I just had to get stronger on my own.”
Brooke’s documentary, out on Hulu later this year, is in two parts, with the first examining the sexualisation she experienced as a young age.
In her role in ‘Pretty Baby’ aged 11, Brooke appeared naked as a child prostitute with a then-29-year-old Keith Carradine.
At 15, she appeared in two more films, ‘The Blue Lagoon’ and ‘Endless Love’, that included sex and nudity.
She also did a nude photoshoot at age 10.
Brooke – married to tennis champion Andre Agassi from 1997 to 1999 before getting wed to screenwriter Christopher Hardy, with whom she has two daughters – has said she didn’t lose her virginity until the age of 22 due to a lack of self-confidence.
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