Featured Image Credit: Hulu
Topics: Brooke Shields, Celebrity, TV And Film
Emily Brown
WARNING: This article discusses topics that some readers may find distressing.
The Blue Lagoon and Endless Love actor Brooke Shields has opened up about her experience having to kiss a grown man when she was just 11 years old.
The actor, now 58 years old, was just a child when she got into acting, and in 1978 she landed a role in the film Pretty Baby alongside Keith Carradine and Susan Sarandon.
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Shields was only 11 when she appeared in the film, in which she played a child being raised in a brothel, while her co-star Carradine was 27 years old.
At one point in the film, Shields' character had to kiss Carradine's Bellocq.
Looking back, Shields has admitted she struggles to understand why her own mum let her kiss a grown man.
Shields' own daughters, Rowan and Grier, have since refused to watch the film, and the family members went as far as calling the film ‘child pornography’ in Shield's two-part documentary, also named Pretty Baby.
Rowan said: “It’s child pornography! Would you have let us [do that] at the age of 11.”
Responding to her daughter, Hollywood icon Shields emotionally replied: "No."
Brooke opened up about the conversation she'd had with her daughters about her past role in an interview with The Sunday Times Magazine, in which she admitted the chat was difficult as they struggled to come to terms with her mum’s decision.
“That was hard for me, to not justify [my] mum to them," Shields said.
"But when they asked, I thought ‘Oh God, I have to admit this’. But I don’t know why she thought it was all right.
“'I mean, I could say, 'Oh, it was the time back then,' or 'Oh, it was art.' But I don't know why she thought it was all right. I don't know.’”
Shield's mother, Theresia ‘Teri’ Shields, was an American actor, socialite and model who died in 2012 from a long illness related to dementia aged 79.
The actor's mum struggled with alcoholism and in her book, There Was a Little Girl, Shields shared that her mum would often leave her at a neighbour’s house to go out partying and would organise dates for a young Shields with famous men.
"Even though I understood her better than anybody else, I'm not sure I ever understood her fully," she wrote.
As well as appearing in Pretty Baby, Shields appeared in The Blue Lagoon when she was 14 years old; a film that included a lot of nude scenes.
While all of Shields' nude scenes were performed by the film’s 32-year-old stunt coordinator, the actor did many of her topless scenes with her hair glued to her chest.