Brooke Shields Reveals How Ex Andre Agassi Gave Her the Strength To Make a Major Life Shift

Brooke Shields has been happily married to director and film producer Chris Henchy for almost 23 years, but if fans go back into the Hollywood gossip archives, she had a very public first marriage. In 1997, the supermodel married tennis superstar Andre Agassi in what seemed like a fairytale wedding. The marriage only lasted two years, but Brooke has credited him with helping her make a major life change.

Since she was a baby, the now-58-year-old actress’ life had been controlled by her mother, Teri Shields — she was a momager years before Kris Jenner even coined that phrase. The relationship had become toxic from a business perspective, but Brooke kept getting lured back into her mother’s web until Agassi stepped in. He helped her set up a healthy boundary with her mother.

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“The whole relationship with him was so necessary,” she told People in 2014. “He gave me my first taste of freedom from my mom. He swept me away. You’d say something and it would happen.” Now 10 years later, Brooke still loves that her Agassi marriage helped reset the entire trajectory of her life. “With Andre, it also felt good to feel smaller than another, because he was so famous and number 1 in the world,” she explained to AARP the Magazine. “Everywhere we went, he had tons of bodyguards. I could sit back because it wasn’t my world. He was the first one out of the car when we arrived at events. It was a real kind of respite.”

That step back from Teri was “a transition that I needed,” Brooke noted. “I wasn’t strong enough to separate from my mother on my own. I kept falling back in.” Even though their marriage faltered, largely because of his meth addiction, she was able to get herself a major Hollywood agent, book roles on Broadway, and of course, snag her cameo on Friends. She shared, “Friends was really big. It was such a validation of my instincts.” Brooke then landed a starring role in the sitcom Suddenly Susan which ran for four seasons on NBC.

Her marriage to Agassi wasn’t meant to be a forever situation — he’s now married to fellow tennis star Steffi Graf — but he was in her life for a reason. Brooke needed someone to nudge her in the right direction and lead her toward a path of happiness. That’s what her first marriage did for her.

Before you go, click here to see the shortest celebrity marriages you probably forgot about.

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