Parents should protect their children and, at best, protect them from the evil intentions of others. But what happens when your own mother makes the wrong decisions? In the case of Hollywood star Brooke Shields, that's exactly what happened.
When Shields was just ten years old, her mother had her pose nude for Playboy's publication Sugar and Spice. Teri Shields, who died in 2012, had big dreams for her daughter. Just days after Brooke's birth, she reportedly said her daughter was "the most beautiful child and I will help her in her career." The photoshoot was just the beginning: A year after posing nude in a bathtub for the male photographer, Brooke Shields played a child prostitute in Louis Malle's 'Pretty Baby.'
In the documentary of the same name, the 57-year-old looks back at the key moments of her life with different eyes. The reason is, among other things, her own children, who describe Malle's film as "child pornography". "Would you have let us do that when we were 11?" 19-year-old Rowan asks her mother, who, without thinking, replies "No." "It was... it was hard for me not to justify my mother to them, but when they asked me I was like, 'Oh god, I have to admit it,'" Shields told The Sunday Times. "I mean, I could say, 'Oh, that was the time,' or 'Oh, that was art.' But I don't know why she was okay with that," she says of her own mother.
Surprising statements from Shields, who has defended her mother for life. Because the decisions of the alcoholic Teri Shields were already criticized in the 1970s. Because she offered her daughter for erotic roles, parts of the public called her a pimp. But Brooke Shields herself vehemently defended her. "It's so innate when you're an only child of a single mother," she explains in an interview with the newspaper. "All you want is to love your parents and keep them alive forever and so I wanted to protect them. And by protecting them I justified everything and that strengthened the bond between us."
Working on the documentary "Pretty Baby" made her think differently, Shields told the Sunday Times. The fact that her daughter Grier wanted to become a model worried her at first. "But then I thought, 'She's going to do it whether I sanction her or not.' And the agency doesn't let her work until she's 18, which is so much older than when I started," she explains in an interview. "You can be proud of your past and not be ashamed or sad. And you can be excited because there's more to come," Shields said today.
Which: "Sunday Times"
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