It ‘Seared Me’: Brooke Shields Grapples With Exploitation, Sexualization in New Doc Trailer
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Brooke Shields confronts the exploitation and over-sexualization that fueled her rise to stardom in the new trailer for the upcoming documentary, Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields.
The two-part doc, directed by Lana Wilson, delves into Shields’ career, as she rose from a child model to an actor, taking on controversial roles in films like Louis Malle’s Pretty Baby (filmed when Shields was just 11, she plays an exploited child growing up in a brothel). In the Eighties, as a teenager, Shields’ popularity exploded with roles in movies like The Blue Lagoon and Endless Love, and maybe most famously, a massive Calvin Klein ad campaign.
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“The entirety of my life, it was, ‘She’s a pretty face,’ over and over and over and over,” Shields recalls in the opening moments of the trailer. “And that always, just, seared me.”
Along with offering Shields the space to open up about the scrutiny and discomfort that surrounded her fame, the film looks at broader trends, such as how the sexualization of young girls appeared to be a backlash to the feminist movement, and how impossibly high-beauty standards for young women remain the standard. The trailer also teases some interviews with Shields’ friends and peers, including Laura Linney and Drew Barrymore.
One element of the movie not teased in the trailer is Shields’ revelation that she was sexually assaulted by an unnamed Hollywood executive. The assault occurred more than 30 years ago, at a time when Shields was struggling to find work as an actress. After dinner with a Hollywood executive, whom she thought might shave a role for her, the executive invited her to call for a cab from his hotel room, where she says he assaulted her.
“In the movie,” Shields says, “I just absolutely froze. My one ‘no’ should have been enough. And I just thought, ‘Stay alive, and get out.’ And I just shut it out. And god knows I knew how to be disassociated from my body. I’d practiced that.”
Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival. It will arrive on Hulu on April 3.
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