What happened to the star Brooke Shields? The pretty actress and model became internationally known after her graceful performance as Emmeline in the classic 80s romantic motion picture “The Blue Lagoon”.
Brooke Christa Camille Shields was born on 31 May 1965, in New York. Since she was very little, her beauty attracted attention. She started her first job as a child in an advertising soap. At the age of 10, she was already a high demand by several photographers and had established her career as a model thanks to her iconic Calvin Klein ads (“You know what gets between me and my Calvins? Nothing”). These photos were responsible for taking Brooke to the filming industry. Her breakthrough was played a child prostitute in Louis Malle’s 1978 drama “Pretty Baby” aged just 12 years old. The film was controversial, and that controversy followed Shields onto her next major motion picture, two years later, which made Brooke known worldwide.
In the teen romance “The Blue Lagoon” the actress plays one of the children who, after a shipwreck, end up on a desert island in the Pacific Ocean, saved by an old chef. Shortly thereafter, the cook dies, leaving boy Richard and girl Emmeline stranded on a desert island and they fall in love. It featured nude scenes between the male and female leads, even though Shields was only 14 at the time of filming – she testified to a US Congressional inquiry that body doubles were used, but she appeared topless (with just her hair covering her chest) throughout.
Her next big movie, “Endless Love”, was also racy for the time and had to be edited to avoid a dreaded ‘X’ rating from the MPAA. In the meantime, she became the youngest ever cover star of Vogue. After those features, she did no other outstanding work.
At 19, she even dated Michael Jackson for a brief period. The actress even appeared at her special funeral. “We both had to act like adults at an early age. But when we were together, we were just kids having fun. We never work together, we never perform together, we never dance on the same stage … we neither make a video nor a song together. All we did was laugh, ”she said in her speech.
In 2005, Shields spoke to magazines and appeared on television programs to publicise his battle against postpartum depression. The disease would have started by several factors: her father’s death three weeks earlier, the stress, some failures and family cases of depression, as well as hormonal changes and life changes due to pregnancy.
She released a book, “Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression” that she recounts and discusses the experience she had in postpartum depression and the suicidal thoughts that came with it.
Shields’ movie career never reached the heights of her teenage years once she returned to acting in the 90s after graduating from Princeton with a bachelor’s degree in French literature. Her most notable role was Joey’s crazy girlfriend in an episode of “Friends”, a role which she claims drove then-husband Agassi mad with rage, causing him to smash all of his tennis trophies. Four seasons of the sitcom ‘Suddenly Susan’ paid the bills between 1996-2000, as did a series of TV movies.
She participated in some episodes of the “‘That‘ 70s Show “and “Hannah Montana”, acted as a guest actress in “Nip / Tuck” and “Two and A Half Men”. Her last job was a participation in the series “Jane the Virgin” in 2018.
Since 2001, she has been married to television writer Chris Henchy. At 55, they have two daughters, Rowan Francis, born in 2003 and Grier Hammond, born in 2006.
Last February, Shields revealed to the press that she broke her femur in a freak accident. “I was on one of those balance boards that I have been doing every day,” she said. “It was just something that I like to do. I’ve done it on Instagram and I stupidly switched my focus and I flew up in the air and just hit perfectly and snapped my femur. ” She has been recovering since then.
