Brooke Shields is probably one of the most glamourous actresses currently, but she is not shy to reveal the ugly sides of her rise to fame in her biographical documentary titled Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields.
The two-part Hulu film, which premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, explores Brooke’s rise to child stardom, which started with controversial films like 1978’s Pretty Baby, where she acted as a 12-year-old prostitute, and 1980’s Blue Lagoon, where she was filmed partially nude at 14 years old. Her teen years also included a very famous Calvin Clein underwear modeling campaign.
However, the early years of Brooke’s sexual objectification were all happening under the watchful eyes of her mother, Teri Shields, who was her manager at that time, and whom she eventually fired.
“Over the decades there’s been a lot said, more negative than positive,” Brooke said of Teri, who passed on in 2012, to USA Today in 2014. “The love was so intense,” she continued. “[My mom] came before anybody. I thought she was God, I thought she could change the weather. It was us against the world.” Let’s take a look at the complicated mother-daughter relationship, below.
Teri Was Brooke’s Manager
Brook Shield’s mom, Teri, was born in August 1, 1933 in New Jersey. She got married to Francis Shields in 1964 and got divorced just some few months later when Brook was only five months old.
Six months down the line, Teri got Brooke her first national ad, for Ivory soap and acted as her manager until Brooke was in her 20s.
Teri Was A Chronic Alcoholic
According to The Times, Brook Shield’s mother, Teri was known to be an alcohol addict and would seldom sneak into the bars when Brooke was on Hollywood movie productions. The Suddenly Susan star even staged an intervention at age 13 for Teri, but the stint of sobriety was short-lived, per the outlet.
“I also said goodbye to her every time she drank. She wasn’t present. I knew who she was capable of being because it was in there. I feel sad that she’s missing out on this [documentary]. She’s probably looking down saying, ‘I didn’t get enough screen time,” Brooke said of Teri at the Variety Studio at Sundance.
Brooke Posed For Playboy At 10 Years Old On The Order Of Her Mum Teri
Teri was accused at times of exploiting her own daughter, Brooke, to the extent of setting her to pose nude for a Playboy publication called Sugar and Spice at the age of 10 years old. “Everyone always wanted me to be angry with her, but anger was just too sad for me to take when I looked at how insecure she was,” Brooke told The Sunday Times.
Although Brooke found it hard to blame Teri, she also did not find it easy to defend her actions when her daughters, 19 year old Rowan and 16 year old Grier called Pretty Baby “child pornography” and asked her of she would you have let them act that at that age.
“That was … that was hard for me, to not justify my mom to them, but when they asked me, I thought, ‘Oh God, I have to admit this,’” Brooke told The Times. “I mean, I could say, ‘Oh, it was the time back then,’ or ‘Oh, it was art.’ But I don’t know why she thought it was all right. I don’t know.”
Brooke Wrote a Tell-All About Their Relationship
Brooke revealed more about her relationship with Teri in a book she called “There Was a Little Girl: The Real Story of My Mother and Me“, which was released in 2014. The book was released almost two years after Teri’s death at the age of 79. She had died following a long illness related to dementia. “You don’t ever recover from losing a parent, It’s a primal thing. You learn to put it in a different place in your heart,” Brooke said at the Variety Studio.
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