The truth has a way of coming out, even if it is not always pretty or easy. Brooke Shields is controlling the narrative in her new biographical Hulu documentary Brooke Shields: Pretty Baby. It drops on April 3.
In this two-part series, Brooke tells her life story. She recounts what it was like being sexualized at a young age in films such as Pretty Baby and The Blue Lagoon. She also reveals for the first time that she was sexually assaulted 30 years ago by an unnamed powerful Hollywood executive. She said nothing at the time, fearing for her career.
Brooke opened up about why she did not report the assault at the time. "No one is going to believe me. People weren't believing those stories back then. I thought I would never work again,” she explained.
Brooke is owning her story. "Doing the documentary, you see it all together, and it's a miracle that I survived," she stated. It was not easy to heal from this traumatic incident. "It's taken me a long time to process it," she disclosed.
More from LittleThings: Brooke Shields Reveals She Was Raped In Her 20s By An Unnamed Man In Hollywood
Brooke opened up about her emotional state reliving the trauma. "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 explained.
The rape happened when Brooke was in her 20s, just after she graduated from Princeton. She had been struggling to find work and was at the "lowest point” of her career. She was hopeful when a big Hollywood executive invited her out for dinner.
“I thought I was getting a movie, a job,” she recalled. Instead, when she went to use the phone in his hotel room, he attacked her.
"I didn't fight. I just froze,” she says in the documentary. After the traumatic assault, Brooke thought she was to blame. "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.'"
Brooke compartmentalized in order to survive. "I'd always had a sense of disassociation from my body. From my sexuality. It was just easier to shut myself off. I was good at it,” she recalled. She did tell her friend Gavin de Becker.
He is proud of her for speaking her truth. "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."
Brooke, now a mother of two, is sharing her story to help others. "Everybody processes their own trauma on a different timeline. I want to be an advocate for women to be able to speak their truth,” she concludes.
