‘I didn’t want to be defined by those horrible moments’: Brooke Shields on how she survived Hollywood

The new two-part documentary Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields, which will air on Disney+ on 4 April, is hard to watch. 

At the New York City premiere, the audience collectively gasped at footage of 11-year-old Brooke (and 15-year-old Brooke, and 18-year-old Brooke) fielding blunt and often offensive questions from grown men during televised interviews. Behind me in the theatre, one woman audibly yelped as a male interviewer read aloud to Brooke and her mother, Teri Shields, a description of Teri from a magazine profile which noted the physical effects of her drinking habits– bags under her eyes and “dry skin” – followed by, “Do you love your mother?” 

“I had never seen my whole life in its entirety, start to finish,” Shields told GLAMOUR editor-in-chief Samantha Barry during a panel that followed the premiere. “I’m a very good compartmentalising human being, and that’s how, I think, I stayed alive.”

The 57-year-old teared up as she reflected on those TV interviews, as well as the explicit films like Pretty Baby and The Blue Lagoon that she starred in as a child. “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.” 

Shields was joined on stage by Pretty Baby director Lana Wilson, whose directing credits include Taylor Swift’s 2020 documentary Miss Americana, as well as executive producers Ali Wentworth and George Stephanopoulos. Addressing her fellow panellists, Shields said, “I just lived that life, but you all made it real, and that’s such a gift.” Shields is also grateful that she was able to participate in the making of the documentary “and to have this not be after I’m dead” so that she could “own all of it, own how I processed it, own my talent, own the beautiful people that are friends of mine and my family that appeared in it that were there for me.”