There is something positive in my particular journey
From an aristocratic family and dedicated to showing business practically since she was born, Brooke Shields is as sincere as ever in Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields, the biographical documentary about the actress that was presented at the Sundance Film Festival and gives a full look at nuances, from her rise to fame to her relationship with her mother, Teri Shields, and with the media, which S- her from an early age. She has confessed what she always denied.
Brooke Shields began her career at eleven months old as a model for an advertisement for the Ivory soap brand, shot by photographer Francesco Scavullo. It was her mother, Theresia Anna Schmonn, better known as Teri Shields, who introduced her to show business from her position as an actress, model, and film producer. Taking advantage of her childish beauty, Teri took Brooke to all kinds of castings. Especially since she became Brooke's guardian after divorcing the little girl's father, Francis Alexander Shields.
In 1974 she got her first role in a movie: After the Fall, by Arthur Miller. She continued to shoot commercials until she stripped for the first time at the age of 10 to "encourage her career," her mother admitted. In 1976 she joined the Eileen Ford modeling agency and in 1977 she received a supporting role in the film The Prince of Central Park. But her fame would come a year later with Pretty Baby, by French filmmaker Louis Malle. The compromise agreed with Malle was to allow the girl to pose N-, in exchange for her Teri Shields being present on set as a supervisor.
In the film, Brooke Shields plays Violet, a 13-year-old girl who is abandoned by her mother Hattie (played by Susan Sarandon) at the brothel where she works after running off with a man. The madame who runs the brothel then decides to auction off her virginity, until an N- photographer named Bellog rescues the girl, who adores her savior, whom he calls daddy and for whom she is willing to do what she wants. be. Pretty Baby launched the young actress to stardom, at the same time that it aroused great controversy, especially towards her mother, who was widely criticized for what was considered great personal ambition and the manipulation of her daughter.
Although it was not her first and it would not be the last time that the media would S- her. At the age of 15, she participated in Blue Lagoon and Endless Love. In both tapes, there was S- and N-. In addition, she continued working on advertising campaigns of different kinds until, at the age of 16, a photographer friend of her family tried to sell N- photos of her from when she was nine years old. Her mother sued him and he won. Another experience that marked the actress in her adolescence.
"I think there is something positive in my particular journey and in perseverance and hard work," Brooke Shields has assured after the biographical documentary about her life exposed the ra-e she suffered, her mother's alcoholism, and the S- of her media body at a young age while embarrassing herself. She has been silent for all these years, but why? "I think we've made progress and it's a process of a couple of steps forward and one step back. People are telling more of their stories to allow us to start changing the way we talk about these issues," she says.
Directed by Lana Wilson, the documentary takes its name from the 1978 film Pretty Baby by Louis Malle, where in addition to stripping her, he had to kiss 29-year-old Keith Carradine. "Brooke Shields is smarter, stronger, and more fearless than you think. I have been in awe of her courage and it would have been so easy for her to be the role model everyone wanted, but she looked for other things. She wanted to do more than that. And of that it's about the journey she takes in the film," says its director at the Sundance Film Festival.
Shields, who has written two memoirs, had always refused to make a documentary on her life. But now, at 57, with a son heading off to college, the support of her friend Ali Wentworth, and a good feeling about where she is at in her life after years of therapy, the actress felt it was time. suitable to tell his greatest tragedy, thus joining the #MeToo movement: "We must observe how we are taught to see people and how we are taught to let them see us. It is a new topic of conversation on the table," he ditched.
