In the brand-new documentary “Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields,” which had its world premiere on Friday at the Sundance Film Festival, Brooke Shields disclosed that she had been raped as a young Hollywood starlet.
The former supermodel refused to identify the man who attacked her, but claimed to have met him not long after graduating from college, thinking they were meeting for business to explore casting her in a new film.
Insisting that he would call her a taxi from his room, he drove her back to his hotel. She claimed that he instead vanished into the restroom before emerging nude and attacking her.
“It was like wrestling… I was afraid I could get choked out or something,” Shields recalled in the documentary.
“I didn’t fight that much. I didn’t. I just absolutely froze. I thought that my one ‘no’ should have been enough. And I just thought ‘stay alive and get out.'”
After the incident, Shields recalled phoning her friend and security head Gavin de Becker, who told her: “That’s rape.”
She replied “I’m not willing to believe that,” and has not spoken of the incident publicly until now.
The disclosure, which is one of several shocking moments in the movie, which will be aired on the Hulu streaming site in two parts, is similar to #MeToo confessions made by well-known and lesser-known Hollywood actresses in recent years.
Shields underwent extensive sexualization as a young child, which included a provocative nude photo shoot at age 10 and her role as a child prostitute in the movie “Pretty Baby” at age 11.
The documentary depicts a teenage Shields being grilled about her parts in films like “Blue Lagoon” and “Endless Love” as well as the series of contentious Calvin Klein jeans advertisements she appeared in by much older male talk show hosts.
After experiencing global fame as a teenager, Shields attended university at Princeton, and initially struggled to find acting roles again after she graduated — leading to the meeting with her alleged rapist.
The film also details the media’s later fixation with Shields’ virginity, her mother’s alcoholism, and her first marriage to tennis player Andre Agassi, which garnered Shields a standing ovation at its Sundance premiere.
It includes a number of Shields’ well-known pals, such as Laura Linney, Drew Barrymore, and Lionel Richie.
Shields, 57, said it “felt like the right time in my life” to participate in a documentary, but that she never wanted to “become shut down.”
“The industry that I was in really primes you to be shut down and I just didn’t want to lose to that. I didn’t want to become that victim.”
