Brooke Shields’ youngest daughter wept “a lot” while watching the actress’ new documentary that exposes how she was raped in her 20s – before refusing to finish the film.
Brooke Shields’ youngest daughter wept ‘a lot’ while watching the actress’ new documentary that exposes how she was raped in her 20s – before refusing to finish the film
The ‘Blue Lagoon’ actress, 57, who has girls Rowan, 19, and Grier, 16, with her husband Chris Henchy, 59, said her eldest was better able to handle the content of two-part film ‘Pretty Baby’, but her sister “did not feel prepared” for its horrors.
Brooke, who took her daughters to the New York premiere of the Disney+ docuseries, told Glamour magazine’s editor-in-chief Samantha Barry during a panel talk that followed the showing about overwhelmed Grier’s emotional reaction to it: “There were a lot of tears. She had a very strong reaction in the beginning and couldn’t finish the film, to be honest.”
Brooke also told how she survived the rape and exploitation she has been subjected to by “compartmentalising” the traumas before finally finding her “voice”.
She added: “I had never seen my whole life in its entirety, start to finish. I’m a very good compartmentalising human being, and that’s how, I think, I stayed alive.
“To look at all of it, to watch the progression of that little girl, and see how her voice changed – you know there’s something really… I’m very proud that I found my voice. You can hear my voice. I’m proud of all the work I’ve done. I’m proud that I’ve come this far.”
Brooke added deciding not to live as a “victim” also helped her come through her traumas.
She said: “The victim part is a dangerous thing because just by deciding not to be the victim doesn’t mean that what happened to you wasn’t wrong.
“And I’ve been criticised for saying that too. But the interesting thing to me is, yes, there are a lot of terrible things that happen to a lot of people all the time.
“And in that moment, there is a victim and there’s a perpetrator. Yes. But how you go through it and how you decide to live your life – not as a victim, as someone who survived something and acknowledges how wrong it is – that’s a very different thing.
“I didn’t want to be defined by those horrible moments, I didn’t want my life taken away. I didn’t want the good that there was to be totally, totally obliterated by those different incidences.”
Brooke was raped in her early 20s but kept the attack secret for years.
She 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 she didn’t speak about it publicly until now.
Her new documentary, out April 4, also delves into the abuse of young and vulnerable people in Hollywood.
Child star Brooke – 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 says she was attacked after going back to his hotel room following their meal and when she got in a taxi after the rape cried all the way on a trip to her friend’s apartment.
Brooke says she wrote to her attacker years later, but he did not reply.
In her role in ‘Pretty Baby’ aged 11, Brooke appeared naked as a child prostitute with a 29-year-old Keith Carradine.
At 15, she appeared in two more films, ‘Blue Lagoon’ and ‘Endless Love’, that included sex and nudity.
She also did a nude photoshoot at age 10.
Brooke – who was married to tennis champion Andre Agassi, 52, from 1997 to 1999 before getting wed to screenwriter Chris has said she didn’t lose her virginity until the age of 22 due to a lack of self-confidence.
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