In the upcoming Hulu documentary Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields, Hollywood star Brooke Shields talks for the first time about being raped in her 20s.
As the now 57-year-old recounts in the documentary — which screened at Sundance Film Festival on Friday, February 3 — she met an acquaintance for dinner when he broached the prospect of a movie role following her graduation from Princeton University in 1987.
Brooke Shields in 1987 (Mario Casilli/TV Guide/Courtesy: Everett Collection)
“I thought it was a work meeting,” she says, per USA Today. “I had met this person before, and he was always nice to me.”
During the meal, however, Shields realized the man’s behavior was “changing” and he wasn’t talking about the movie. She offered to grab a cab home, but the man insisted on calling her a cab at his hotel, she says. Then, in his hotel room, he disappeared for a while and then returned naked and threw himself on her, she recalls in the documentary.
“It was like wrestling,” she says. “I was afraid I would get choked out or something, I didn’t know. I played the scene out in my head, so I didn’t fight that much. … I just absolutely froze. I just thought, ‘Stay alive and get out.’ … I just shut it out. And God knows I knew how to be dissociated from my body. I practiced that [as a model].”
Afterward, Shield took a cab to her friend’s apartment and “cried all the way” there, she says. And that’s where she told Gavin de Becker, her security chief, what happened.
“I was angry to hear her story,” de Becker recalls in Pretty Baby. “That’s my little sister, and I wanted her to know she didn’t do anything wrong.”
Shields doesn’t name her alleged rapist in Pretty Baby but does call him “an industry insider,” per Deadline.
Pretty Baby, an ABC News production named after Shields’ 1978 film of the same name, explores how the actress was exploited and sexualized during her years as a child star and young model, according to Deadline. The two-part documentary, directed by Lana Wilson (Miss Americana), will debut on Hulu later this year.
RAINN offers help for those impacted by sexual assault. Call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-HOPE (4673) or visit the online chat for 24-hour, free, confidential support.
