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Brooke Shields’ new documentary ‘Pretty Baby’ has made headlines at the Sundance Film Festival due to its revelation that she was sexually assaulted in her twenties. In a new interview with People magazine, Shields revealed that it was a powerful Hollywood executive who assaulted her more than 30 years ago.
“It took me a long time to process it,” Shields said. “I’m angrier now than I could have been back then. If you’re scared, you rightly are. These are scary situations. They don’t have to be violent to be scary.
Shields said she never went public with the sexual assault before the documentary because she thought “no one would believe me”, adding, “People didn’t believe those stories at the time. I thought I would never work again.
The sexual assault happened at “the lowest point of my career,” Shields said. She had recently graduated from Princeton University and booked a meeting with a Hollywood executive. The meeting took the form of a business dinner.
“I thought I was going to get a movie, a job,” Shields said.
The dinner ended with the Hollywood executive dragging her back to his hotel room, where he assaulted her. Shields added: “I didn’t fight. I just froze,” and said she blamed herself for the assault afterwards.
“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,'” Shields said. to disassociate because at that point it was old fashioned,” she recalled. “And because it was a fight or flight type of choice. Fight was not an option, so you just leave your body. ‘You’re not there. That didn’t happen.
In his two-part documentary, which Variety Called “fascinating” and “accomplished” in her rave review from Sundance, Shields speaks for the first time about her early experiences in Hollywood. The film traces his rise as a child advertising model until his sexualization in the cinema, from the age of 12, in “Pretty Baby” (1978), then at 15, in “The Blue Lagoon” (1980). The documentary is directed by Lana Wilson, best known for her Taylor Swift documentary “Miss Americana.”
“Brooke Shields: Pretty Baby” debuts April 3 on Hulu.