Brooke Shields is talking out for the primary time a few sexual assault she skilled in her early 20s. The actress and mannequin shares her story in Lana Wilson’s new two-part documentary Fairly Child: Brooke Shields, which premiered at present on the 2023 Sundance Movie Competition. Though Shields does not establish her assaulter within the movie, she confirms it was somebody she knew and was pleasant with. “That is the primary time I’ve ever spoken about what occurred,” Shields says as she tearfully recounts her story.
On the time the assault occurred, the previous baby star was seeking to re-start her appearing profession after stepping away from the highlight to attend Princeton College. However her re-entry into Hollywood proved tougher than anticipated. That was when her assaulter first reached out. “I had heard there was a film being made, and I used to be in consideration,” Shields recollects within the movie. “It was the primary time since school that any was form of expressed [in me].”
“We had a dinner,” she continues. “I assumed it was a piece assembly. I had met this individual earlier than, and he was all the time good to me.” However the temper of the assembly abruptly modified halfway by the meal, and she or he shortly started seeking to make an exit. “I mentioned, ‘I’ve to get a cab,’ and he mentioned, ‘Come again to the lodge — I am going to name you a cab.'”
Following him as much as his lodge room, Shields remembers being left alone for a time frame and feeling unsure what to do. “I do not need to go over to the telephone, as a result of it is not my telephone,” she says. “I do not need to sit down, as a result of I am not staying.” Whereas looking on the view of the seashore with a pair of binoculars, her assaulter re-emerged. “The door opens, and the individual comes out bare,” she says. “I put the binoculars again and he was proper on me.”
“It was like wrestling,” Shields describes, including that she was too fearful of being choked or hit to think about preventing again. “I simply completely froze. I assumed: ‘My one ‘No’ ought to have been sufficient. Keep alive and get out.'”
Throughout the assault, Shields says that she “disassociated” herself from her physique, an expertise she’d had earlier in her profession on the set of the 1981 Franco Zeffirelli movie Countless Love. Whereas filming a love scene for that romance, Shields — who was 15 when the movie was shot — remembers the late Italian director grabbing her toe and twisting it to seize the look of “ecstasy” that he needed on digital camera.
“It was extra angst than something as a result of he was hurting me,” Shields says in Fairly Child. “I did not need to seem silly our untalented, so I simply disassociated. It is such as you’re [instantly] zooming out: seeing a scenario, however you are not linked to it. You immediately change into. a vapor of your self round one thing that is taking place.” (Zeffirelli additionally directed the 1968 movie model of Romeo & Juliet that featured a quick nude scene with the movie’s then-underage stars, Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting. Each actors are actually suing Paramount over the scene.
When the assault ended, Shields recollects her still-nude attacker not even acknowledging what occurred. “The subsequent factor I do know, the door is open and the individual says, ‘I am going to see you round.’ I simply mentioned ‘Yeah,’ and walked out, went down within the elevator and bought my very own cab. I cried all the best way to my buddy’s house.”
In line with Shields, she later confronted her assaulter in a letter slightly than focus on the incident publicly. “I mentioned, ‘That was an enormous belief that was simply blown up. How dare you? I am higher than that. I am higher than you’re. That is the best way I handled issues. I needed to erase the entire thing from my thoughts and physique and simply carry on the trail that I used to be on. The system had by no means as soon as come to assist me. So I simply needed to get stronger by myself.”
Talking with The Hollywood Reporter previous to the Sundance premiere of Fairly Child, Shields mentioned that she initially wasn’t certain if she’d share her story when she sat right down to be interviewed by Wilson for the movie. “I had no thought I used to be going to say it,” she defined, including that the tenor of the #MeToo occasions made her notice now can be the precise time to talk up. “I really feel as a mom of two younger ladies that I hope that simply by even listening to my incident that I can add myself to turning into an advocate. As a result of that is one thing that does occur day-after-day, and it shouldn’t be taking place. I felt that I had arrived at a spot the place I might speak about it. It’s taken me a very long time.”
Premiering on Hulu later this yr, Fairly Child options Shields reflecting on a lot of her high-profile relationships, together with with Michael Jackson, who she says was by no means a romantic accomplice regardless of the extraordinary public scrutiny of their years-long friendship. “We met once I was 13 and we frolicked,” she recollects within the movie. “It was very childlike.”
“We had been simply actually pals,” Shields continues. “However he all the time needed to be form of seen with me. If he would decide a restaurant, I might say, ‘How did [the paparazzi] know we had been right here?’ After which at one level, he mentioned that we must always undertake a baby and lift a baby collectively.”
The actress additionally signifies that Jackson lied when he advised Oprah Winfrey that he and Shields had been courting throughout a well-known TV interview in 1993. “I known as him [afterwards] and mentioned, ‘What are you doing?'” she remembers. “‘I am at present with my boyfriend in New York Metropolis! What are you doing?’ I ultimately misplaced contact with him.”
Fairly Child: Brooke Shields premieres on Hulu later this yr.
