Brooke Shields is breaking her silence about being sexually assaulted by a top Hollywood executive almost 30 years ago.
“No one is going to believe me,” she thought. “People weren’t believing those stories back then. I thought I would never work again.”
On April 3, Hulu will air her two-part documentary Brooke Shields: Beautiful Baby. The doc will reveal an in-depth look into the life of this unique young woman, who rose to fame because of her sexualized roles in movies like Pretty Baby (in which she played a child prostitute) and The Blue Lagoon.
“Doing the documentary, you see it all together, and it’s a miracle that I survived,” she said. “It’s taken me a long time to process it.”
Adding that, “I’m more angry now than I was able to be then. If you’re afraid, you’re rightfully so. They are scary situations. They don’t have to be violent to be scary.”
She said it was the “lowest point of my career” at the time because she had just graduated from Princeton University and was struggling to find work.
In the documentary, Shields said she was assaulted after he encouraged her to call a cab from his hotel room after dinner. She said, “I didn’t fight,” as she recalled, “I just froze.”
Afterward, she blamed herself for the assault. “I kept saying, ‘I shouldn’t have done that. Why did I go up with him? I shouldn’t have had that drink at dinner.’ “
“It was really easy to disassociate because, by then, it was old hat,” she recalled. “And because it was a fight-or-flight type of choice. The fight was not an option, so you just leave your body. ‘You’re not there. It didn’t happen.’ “
She said, “I’d always had a sense of disassociation from my body. From my sexuality.” She continued, “I was mostly a cover girl, so it’s all here,” Shields added, indicating from her neck up, “And it was just easier to shut myself off. I was good at it.”
Only one person knew of her assault, and it was a close friend, one-time security consultant Gavin de Becker.
“Brooke lived so long in the judgment of others, by the millions, so it was heartbreaking to see her judge herself,” he said. “It has also been inspiring to see her integrate the truth as she has.”
Now, she’s opening up about her experience “with the hopes of helping people not feel alone,” she said. “Everybody processes their own trauma on a different timeline. I want to be an advocate for women to be able to speak their truth.”
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