Original subtitles

-How do you feel about all this fuss that´s being made over you?

-I think it´s kind of fun.

-Do you? -Yeah.

You´re enjoying it? -Oh, yeah. I love it.

-You really are an exquisite-looking young lady.

I know you´ve been told that,

but isn´t she a pretty -- pretty girl?

To have you sitting here with me...

[ Applause ]

♫♫

♫♫

-I think the hardest thing for me

was really knowing who I was.

The minute you say "icon,"

it´s this, like, sort of reverse zoom,

and you get just detached from everybody.

It just felt so arbitrary and not merited.

♫♫

-Brooke is a nuclear version of what it is like

to be judged by your appearance.

She´s literally an object to hundreds of millions,

billions of people.

-The way people talked about her

and the perception of her

isn´t really about her as an individual.

It´s just about women.

-Girls are always under pressure to be a perfect object.

Perfection is having a particular kind of body,

having your hair in a particular style,

perfect makeup, and perfect eyebrows.

If you´re the object of someone else´s desire,

then where are your feelings in all of that?

♫♫

♫♫

-I had this thing about not looking in the mirror.

Don´t think about it. Don´t focus on it.

Because I didn´t want to be too much of anything.

I was just born with this face,

and so I didn´t want to think about it.

I wanted to think about the things that I could control,

things that could have happened without beauty.

♫♫

♫♫

[ Crowd shouting ]

-Madonna!

-Madonna! -Madonna!

-Straight ahead. Right there. Beautiful.

[ Shouting continues ]

-There used to be 10 famous people.

Everybody knew them. Everybody knew everything about them.

We all saw the same five movies every year, and that was it.

That´s done.

Now there are a million famous people

that you and I don´t even know.

-With Brooke, there were very few contemporaries of hers,

because fewer people were occupying these roles

in public life, and so they were just much better known.

You just didn´t go anywhere

that somebody wouldn´t know Brooke Shields.

-Brooke Shields -- she´s currently one

of the hottest commodities in the world.

-How many magazine covers have you been on?

Because there´s got to be... -Gosh.

-...we´re talking hundreds, aren´t we?

-Definitely. I don´t even have a figure.

-She is the most photographed woman in the world

with a face that sells like no other.

-Brooke, right here, please. Brooke?

-I thought she really was the most beautiful woman

in the world -- an iconic American beauty.

-She sort of represented a femininity of that time.

There was a sense of she was the -- the woman of the future.

-The People´s Choice Awards congratulates Brooke Shields.

-Watching her on TV or film,

it´s hard to separate her beauty and her history

from who she is -- actually is.

-Would you welcome, please, Miss Brooke Shields?

-Please welcome Brooke Shields.

-Brooke Shields. -Brooke Shields.

-And that is the fun thing

about opening the curtain of Brooke Shields.

She´s just -- she´s not at all what you think.

-Brooke? -Brooke!

-Brooke, right here, please? Brooke?

♫♫

-Mm!

Do you have to go out, pups?

Do you have to go outside? Come here. Come here. Come here.

Huh? You want to go outside?

You stay on the porch, though.

When I go give speeches or do Q-- like, moderated talks

to hundreds and hundreds of women

for whatever the seminar or whatever the event is,

it´s amazing how personal --

personally attached the people are

to me -- like in a... -Yeah.

-You know, my professional life is such a life force inside me

because it´s the only thing I´ve ever known.

-...a superstar. She´s an icon.

-You know, sometimes I´m amazed that I survived any of it.

-What is it like to be famous almost since birth --

say, from 11 months old on,

and then to be a movie star at age 11 or 12?

-The unusual beauty was noticed

from the time she was born --

from the baby to the little girl to glamorous woman.

And this is the little girl behind all those faces --

Brooke Shields.

And this is the face behind the face of Brooke Shields --

Teri Shields, manager and mother.

-You can´t really describe totally what a phenomenon is.

I think mainly it happens.

And Brooke happened. She´s always been beautiful.

The day I brought her home from the hospital,

I just knew she´d be a star.

A star!

♫♫

-My mother -- she really believed

that I was the most unique creature

she had ever laid eyes on, and I was hers.

-What was her first job? How did you decide

that she would be a model? Did you put an ad in the paper?

Did you run around with your 11-month-old baby

and say, "Hey, look what I got!"

-No, no. Francesco Scavullo was doing --

-Famous photographer. -Yes.

He was doing an Ivory soap ad.

She sat on the floor

and ripped a couple of boxes of Ivory soap.

And that´s the way it all began.

-My mom had this creature who people were responding to

and they kept responding to.

You know, we would go to great locations

and do pose number ten,

you know, maybe pose number three.

-Brooke and I went to school together

as very young children.

And I just remember her giggling.

She was a bright, outward-looking child.

We were raised by single mothers,

who were financially hustling to get it going.

My mother was a nurse. Teri managed Brooke.

Teri also saw something in Brooke that was --

she -- she just could see it.

And she was determined to make it happen.

♫♫

-My mom wanted to be fabulous.

She wanted things bigger.

She was from Newark, New Jersey, and she came over

to the New York side and never looked back.

She got a job at Lord & Taylor as a makeup artist,

having never gone beauty school or anything.

Never went to college. And she was a spitfire.

My dad fell in love with this bombshell of a woman,

and I think she just zeroed in

like a heat-seeking missile to this beautiful man --

jet-black hair, dapper dressing, very conservative man.

And my dad went away for a while to work.

He came back and saw her out to here

and kind of just, in a way, forced her to marry him.

-Suburbia is a woman´s world.

-My mom wasn´t going to be any kind of a wife

that my dad anticipated and envisioned,

and she just fought it.

She just divorced him without even telling him.

I just sort of grew up knowing them apart.

-To be on your own as a mother in those days,

you had to be incredibly strong,

and Teri was a force of nature.

-With my mom, we just had so much fun.

There was this, like, bohemian existence.

Then I go to my dad´s,

where it was, like, tradition, tradition, tradition.

Dinner at 6:00 every night.

Everything was routine and regimented.

There´s not a lot of feeling and emotion in it,

but it was great because it was calm.

-♫ Doo-doo-doo ♫

-A cut heals better when it´s kept covered.

As long as your child has a scab on her cut,

she needs a Band-Aid brand adhesive bandage.

-I did a Band-Aid commercial.

I did hair-shampoo commercials,

where I had to run around in a circle,

and they put a rope around my midriff

so that they could just keep me

at the right distance from the camera.

By the end of the day, I had, like,

rope burns around my stomach.

My blouses don´t cling anymore.

Our towels smell cleaner and fresher.

My dress is much softer now.

-Discover the Bounce touch.

-The sort of whispers around the school of, like,

"She´s gone to California."

Third grade, fourth graders, like -- like, "Where´d she go?"

And I would remember seeing the ad campaigns come in --

like, opening the paper and seeing her face.

And it was hard to comprehend.

I just always remember thinking, like, "I hope she´s okay."

-She was a young girl in an all-adult world.

-For many decades,

modeling was one of the very few ways

that a woman could make a lot of money.

And certainly, from the beginning of advertising,

the ideal female body type was curvy, often voluptuous.

-As late as the mid ´60s,

Hollywood was still working off of a sexual idea

based on Marilyn Monroe --

a bombshell, an exaggerated sexuality.

But that was still an adult sexuality.

-Women who epitomized ideal sexuality

were grown women.

They were at least in their 20s,

and they had voluptuous women´s bodies.

Marilyn Monroe -- I think she was, what,

a size 14 or something like that?

Sophia Loren, Ava Gardner --

they were grown women, and they were not children

when they were presented as sexual ideals.

-A new movement for women´s liberation is launched.

And once again, protesters take to the street

to support their demands for total freedom.

-We see Roe v. Wade.

We see sexual-harassment laws come into being.

We see second-wave feminism.

-This revolution -- and it is a revolution, not a reform --

is about humanizing both roles, not exchanging.

-One of the responses of the dominant culture

to the rise of feminism

was the sexualization of little girls.

It´s almost as if we´re told, "Okay,

you´re not gonna be ´traditionally feminine,´"

which traditionally meant

powerless, submissive, dependent,

"we´ll replace you with little girls."

-She´s got a beautiful face.

She has beautiful hair, eyes, nose, mouth, a beautiful body.

I mean, she´s incredible.

-The modeling work that Brooke did started very cute.

She looks very innocent, looks very sweet.

Then everything changed.

You can see the shift in how she is being presented to us.

She´s wearing fewer clothes.

The posing has changed.

The mood was shifting dramatically.

-And when you put a child in a very sexualized position,

it sets off these attitudes that little girls are seductive,

that they´re deliberately provocative,

that they´re somehow going along with all of this.

-I didn´t feel uncomfortable. Nor did I feel embarrassed.

You know, as a model, your body is just to be dressed

and put out there, so I didn´t have that awareness

of my budding puberty -- do you know? --

´cause I was years away from any of that.

-The matter of women and girls

sort of displaying sexuality is really tricky.

We want girls and women to have agency.

But the perception of how that agency affects ourselves

and how it affects the culture is not the same thing,

especially when you´re dealing with minors.

It´s not a fair game.

-I think Brooke´s sort of like a work of art,

and like any beautiful painting,

I think the world should enjoy Brooke and view her.

And you yourself have said, and I quote,

"Ever since Brooke was a baby,

she´s been encouraged to be sensual."

So can´t someone say to you that you are exploiting

the sensuality of a child?

-Well, if that´s all I was doing, probably yes.

But that´s not all I´m doing with Brooke

or what Brooke is doing.

Did you hurt your back? -What am I doing wrong?

-Concentrate on reaching the other end of the pool.

-"Stage Mother" was her label very early on,

and at auditions, you´d hear the stage mothers go,

"I´ll buy you a bike. I´ll buy your bike if you go in there."

And the kids are going, "I don´t want to go. I don´t want to go."

"Get in there! I´ll get you -- I´ll get you a bike."

And it was like this desperation,

and she just never -- she never had that, you know?

She just had this faith that it was going to work out for us.

My mom was always the mom that was like,

"Do you not want to do anything today?

Let´s take the phone off the hook

and let´s go to the park."

There was not a semblance of a career plan.

Our plan was, "Oh, we got that job?

We can get a car."

"Oh, we get this job,

we don´t have to live in our little apartment anymore."

-Brooke knew that money didn´t come easily.

So you were always kind of looking for the next job.

-I was the main breadwinner.

We both used the system to get a better life.

-Do you want to be a star?

-I think so.

-You do? What do you imagine it´s gonna be like?

-I don´t know. I´m not really sure. I just --

-Why do you want to be a star? -´Cause I love acting,

and I love other people´s acting.

And I-I´d like to, like -- I´d like to have people like me

like I like other actresses and actors.

Since I was a little kid,

everything revolved around getting lost in movies.

All I ever wanted to be was an actress.

My mom and I -- we´d go to the movies,

two and three movies a night sometimes.

And it was just.... [gasps]

[ Electronic whirring ]

"I can be that person, and I can be that person.

And I can do that. I can feel it."

My mom took me to art films all the time.

We were seeing Fellini, and we were seeing "Amarcord."

Come on. Boobs in the guy´s face?

There was no prudishness.

It was, "This is the tableau that we´re painting."

And I happened to have been young, but I wasn´t clueless.

-Brooke was already starting to get a reputation

for being a sexualized child model.

But when Louis Malle decided to cast her in "Pretty Baby,"

that image really blew up.

-Do you have any misgivings

about her appearing in "Pretty Baby"?

-No, not at all. We discussed it prior to,

of course, meeting with Louis Malle,

and Louis Malle promised Brooke from his heart

that he would be very sensitive to her as far as the scenes.

-Louis Malle was a French filmmaker.

He had already made quite a few films in France

that were very well known internationally,

including "Zazie in the Metro" and "Elevator to the Gallows."

He wanted to make his first feature film in America.

-I´ve been trying for years

to make a film in New Orleans.

I fell upon this book "Storyville, New Orleans,"

which is about the red-light district.

-Louis talked about the subject matter.

I was 11 years old,

and I may have not known all of the nuance,

but it was a real artistic endeavor.

-I knew from the beginning,

even before the script was finished,

that to find the right girl was absolutely essential.

If she was wrong, the whole picture was wrong.

And one day I saw a photograph of Brooke Shields in a book.

And, you know, she´s so incredibly beautiful

and -- and so poised.

-Perhaps we could make another one now. Would you like to?

-Yeah, why not?

-"Pretty Baby" is set in early 1900´s New Orleans in a brothel,

and an adult sex worker, played by Susan Sarandon,

is raising her young daughter,

played by Brooke Shields. -Do you think I´m pretty?

-And she ends up kind of finding a caretaker...

-Don´t you like me? -...through this photographer

played by Keith Carradine.

But it´s not an entirely sexless, paternal relationship.

[ Indistinct conversations ]

♫♫

-A virgin -- bona fide.

-How old is she?

-Do you want to put me in jail? [ Laughter ]

She´s just old enough.

-Is "Pretty Baby" a critique

of the sexualization of young girls?

Or is it intentionally ambiguous?

-I´ll bid $100. -Yeah!

-Louis Malle does not tell you exactly how to feel about it

and could force you to treat it almost like a Rorschach test

and come to your own conclusions.

-$400.

-Jesus Christ. Who is he, Rockefeller?

-Sold to the man with $400 cash.

[ Cheers and applause ]

[ Band plays ]

-I think one thing that the writer, Polly Platt,

was trying to do with the script was exaggerate something

that she saw in real life

as a way of making a critique of 1970´s Hollywood.

-Being attractive, being pleasing is part

of what girls and women learn.

-I´m glad it´s you.

-Ultimately, that´s what Brooke was having to communicate.

-Well...you look nice, and you have a nice chest.

I can feel the steam inside me right through my dress.

-I wanted to make everybody happy

with the job that I was doing.

When it came to acting, no one helped me.

I was there to say these lines,

to do it without any education about how to do it.

That´s what Louis wanted.

We had a first-kiss scene.

I had never kissed anybody before.

I felt, "Oh, my God, I´m supposed to know how to do this,

but I don´t know how to do this."

Every time Keith tried to do the kiss,

I would scrunch my face up, and Louis got upset with me.

"Don´t do that with your face. Don´t! What is this? Mm!"

And then Keith was the one

who asked to just have a word with me and said to me, "Hey."

He said, "You know what? This doesn´t count."

"It´s pretend. This is all make believe."

-I´ve been on those sets.

People are having fun. You´re filming it. It´s art.

You don´t really think about it until later.

There is an aftermath that then cycles in your head

of, like, "Was that okay?"

-I would argue she wasn´t conscious of what was wrong,

but had a feeling that something was not good, was off.

-They say that, on the set, you felt very uncomfortable

during all this. Is that true?

-Well, I mean, I knew it was gonna be done in good taste,

so, I mean, you know, if you, like,

think about the whole thing, it might be a little uncomfortable.

But I knew that it was gonna be in good taste

and it wasn´t any porno movie,

and so I didn´t feel so bad about it.

I think I learned how to compartmentalize

at such an early age,

and it was a -- you know, a survival technique.

You know, that´s not my life. That´s not who I am.

-You´re in a job that requires you

to put all your boundaries down for the sake of art,

And then you´re also living a public life,

which requires acceptance of no boundaries.

♫♫

-Brooke Shields...

[ Speaking French ]

[ Crowd shouting ]

-The minute we landed there, it was a mosh pit.

It was insane.

All of a sudden, you are just everywhere,

and everybody has something to say,

and it´s not all positive.

-[ Speaking French ]

-If you´re a famous girl, you get one shot.

You come on the scene, and whoever you are

and however you are, that´s who you are.

It´s really hard to change the narrative.

-From that moment on,

I was no longer just a model who was an actress.

I became a focal point for so many things -- good and bad.

-Do you understand, Brooke, how parents feel

about the kind of attention that you´re getting?

-I did it just as another job, and I didn´t -- you know,

I didn´t take it seriously, like I was gonna grow up

to be a prostitute or anything.

There is nothing in my mind that had any idea

that I would become the subject

of so much controversy, conversation, vitriol.

-Some people labeled it "kiddie porn."

-I could never understand how a mother would allow her daughter

to play such a role just for the money.

-Did you see the film?

-No, and I will never see a film like that.

-Her mother got a lot of flack, you know,

around how she managed her

and did she abuse her by putting her out here.

-At the same time,

to hold just the parents accountable

is a whitewash of what is actually happening --

of what is happening systemically.

-Since we live in a fairly misogynistic society,

there´s a lot of scrutiny and criticism

of the mother-daughter relationship.

The male director is celebrated.

-Many critics have hailed "Pretty Baby" for its beauty

and for its sensitivity and intelligence.

-On the other hand,

the mother is blamed and castigated.

-Why would you allow your daughter

to portray a prostitute in a movie?

Was that a big decision for you? -No, it wasn´t at all.

In fact, I looked at it with the artistic value in mind.

It was a very difficult role,

and I don´t think any other child in the limelight today

could have played it as well as Brooke.

-You couldn´t make a "Pretty Baby" now,

you couldn´t make a "Blue Lagoon,"

you couldn´t make an "Endless Love."

-You couldn´t make any of the films you made now.

You couldn´t make them. -I know.

-It would be soft porn, exploitation.

-My mom´s big complaint

was that I was working 14, 16 hour days,

wasn´t having any tutor time,

so that was the stuff that she put her foot down,

protected me on, where she didn´t even bat an eye

for the other stuff -- for the sexuality stuff.

-It has to be done in an artistic way.

-She was always there, controlling everything

behind the scenes, but she didn´t hover.

She didn´t go on the set with me all the time.

-...like the Polaroid.

-You know, and my mom was happy with that,

because she could go to the bar and drink.

I mean.... [ Laughs ]

-Let me ask you, Brooke --

here´s a hard question about your mother.

And it´s described in this magazine as,

"A broad, open-faced woman with manners to match.

Her face bears the marks of the heavy drinker --

the drained look, the rough skin, the sunken eyes."

Is that a fair description of your mother as you know her?

-I don´t think so. Well, because, you know,

as far as the dry skin and the -- you know, her eyes,

well, she has terrible allergies.

And that´s what causes her skin to be the way it is.

And she is very -- she is outspoken,

and she says what she feels. [ Chuckles ]

She´s my mama. -Oh, she is your mom.

Why do you love her so much? Why do you love your mother?

-Well, ´cause it´s just been both of us.

You know what I mean? It´s just been myself --

The two of you. Just the two of us.

-There´s nobody else. -I mean...

-Teri was an alcoholic.

So from a young age, Brooke had a maturity to her

because she had to kind of be aware of what was going on

and defend her mother if need be

and take care of her mother if need be.

-My mom had a very, very tough childhood.

She loved her father so much and lost him when she was 9.

She had a very angry, lonely, sad mom.

She was just never kind to my mom.

It´s just a different generation of emotions,

and she just had so much

that she aspired to and wanted to -- to feel.

I don´t think I ever knew her not drinking.

I just started knowing there was my mom in the morning

and then was my mom after school.

And then she was just hurt and sort of, you know,

sloppy or angry or crude.

There was a pattern to it.

-With Teri, she was fun -- so much fun,

and then there´d be a moment where you´re like, "Uh-oh,"

You as a kid got a sense like maybe it was --

there was something going on.

-When Teri was sober, she was raucous and fun

and loud and big and took up space.

And when she was not in a good way,

it was -- it was duck and cover.

-You know, I remember kind of going, "Okay, you know,

she´s not in the house. I came home with a friend.

She´s not in the house. Where is she?"

-I would follow her lead.

She would know what to do, how to do it,

how to protect herself, what room to go into,

what doors to lock.

And -- And we could both hear -- like, the keys would rattle.

We would go to a room. We would make sure we were safe.

Teri would come home very drunk,

and -- and then we would wait until it got quiet.

And then we´d come out.

-I felt such a responsibility

to keep her alive.

My very life depended on it.

So I thought, you know, you just keep the -- you keep the peace.

You keep them happy and accept the apology in the morning

and go, "I know that that´s true ´cause she really does love me.

I know that. I know that."

-There is a pact.

You want to protect the people you love,

even if they´re deeply flawed and damaged and damaging.

[ Beeping ] -Quiet, please!

-Camera mark.

Take three.

-Being on a movie set was the safest place

that I could be, emotionally.

I craved the routine of a job

because there were other people around,

I could lose myself in it,

and I only had to be responsible for myself.

-3,200 miles from the heart of Hollywood

lies the Fiji Archipelago -- 300 islands of white beaches,

lava cliffs, some jungle foliage.

A motion picture company has come here to recreate

Henry De Vere Stacpoole´s classic adventure story,

"The Blue Lagoon."

-I was 15 when we shot "Blue Lagoon,"

and I was on an island for four months.

I got to live in this fantasy,

so I got to set up my little hut.

And I was just like, "This is the coolest thing in the world."

-The surprise blockbuster movie of the year

is "Blue Lagoon,"

in which a 15-year-old Brooke Shields

learns all about life´s little mysteries.

While millions of impressionable teenagers

and oftentimes startled adults looked on fascinated.

-"Blue Lagoon" was one of the first movies

that parents let their children see

that had to do with coming of age,

loss of virginity, sexuality in that way.

-There are some things you have to see

in order to be a functional conversationalist.

And "Blue Lagoon" was one of those.

-I thought it was the greatest movie.

Me and all my friends would get pictures of "Blue Lagoon,"

like, on our notebooks.

-There were wonderful fantasies for teenagers.

You know, you´re on an island

and falling in love for the first time.

-Promise you´ll always be with me.

-I promise.

-[ Sobs ]

I´ve seen it four times, and I love it.

-It was unrealistic.

I mean, I liked it ´cause I have a lively imagination.

-It teaches a lot of things.

-"The Blue Lagoon" is almost like Adam and Eve.

Brooke Shields is both innocent and treacherous.

-Kiss me.

-You´re all sticky.

-So what? Kiss me.

-[ Chuckles ] Stop! I can´t breathe!

-But I don´t want to stop.

[ Laughs ]

-Aah! What are you doing?

-The director, Randall Kleiser, told a newspaper, "It´s real."

She´s going from a child to a woman during the filming.

-They wanted to make it a reality show.

They wanted to sell my actual sexual awakening.

-The audience could engage in erotic fantasies

about somebody who´s way underage.

They could not recognize the transgression

while they experienced it at the same time.

-I feel so funny in my stomach.

[ Breathing heavily ]

-Me too.

The irony was, I wasn´t in touch

with any of my own sexuality.

I was raised Catholic.

With sex, they sort of taught me,

"Wait till you´re married. You wait until you´re married."

And it was put into my brain.

I had a lot of shame around all of it.

My dad always tried to pretend

that I didn´t do any of the things that I had done.

He just buried his head.

I don´t know if he ever saw one of my movies.

-I don´t remember any controversy

because we just -- we didn´t talk about it in our house.

And I don´t know why.

I think -- you know, I never even asked my stepfather why.

-Well, Diana, um, there´s been a lot of controversy

about, um, you being Brooke Shields´ sister.

Tell me, um what is she really like?

-I couldn´t tell you.

-"Pretty Baby" was kind of the first movie she was known for.

Maybe he just was turned off by that?

I think he just didn´t like show business.

-What is her -- what are her hobbies?

-But he adored her.

He just thought she had, like, the best sense of humor.

-I have a daughter that everybody just says,

"You look just like Brooke Shields."

[ Laughter ]

And, um, you know,

it´s the eyebrows, I think -- the eyes, yes.

-With Brooke and Teri,

they were, you know, it was just the two of them.

So she was treated very much like an adult.

-With my mom, there was this overtness

of talking about things and being brash,

but not teaching me or telling me it´s okay

or telling me it didn´t make me tainted in some way.

-You know, we´ve talked about this image

that is portrayed of Brooke Shields --

a sensuous, sexy, woman-child image,

and yet in your real personal life,

you don´t have that much freedom to just run around

and do what you want to do. You don´t date alone yet.

-Well, just like a regular kid, I don´t really.

-Mm-hmm. -I do every once in a while.

-Well, it´s gonna be tough for me to walk away from here

thinking of you as just a regular kid.

I´m telling you. [ Laughter ]

-When I was a child...

[ Sighs ]

...I thought as a child...

...I spoke as a child...

I understood as a child.

But now I´ve put away childish things,

and I´m ready for Calvins.

♫♫

-Calvin Klein jeans.

-I think I was 16.

Richard Avedon was doing this campaign, and Calvin wanted me.

...to make jeans.

They had said, "We´re gonna do a series

of cinematic commercials.

It´s going to be a play on what a jean is."

The secret of life lies hidden in the genetic code.

Genes are fundamental in determining

the characteristics of an individual

and passing on these characteristics

to succeeding generations.

Occasionally, certain conditions

produce a structural change in the gene,

which will bring about the process of evolution.

This may occur in one or more of the following ways.

Firstly, by selective mating

in which a single gene proves superior

and transmitting its genes to future generations.

Secondly, by gene drift in which certain genes may fade away

while other genes persist.

And finally, by natural selection,

which filters out those genes better equipped

than others to endure in the environment.

This may result in the origin of an entirely new species.

Which brings us to Calvins and the survival of the fittest.

-Calvin Klein jeans.

-I jumped at the chance because it was acting.

[ Harmonica plays ]

It was just an exercise in memorization,

in literary reference, and I had to be smart to do it.

♫ Many a heart is aching... ♫

-When it came out, it was very shocking

because she´s so young, because it´s so overtly sexual,

and also because of the way that the camera

lovingly caresses her body.

-There was nothing in me that ever had the idea

that it was sexual.

Like, I mean, that´s slightly naive.

-Does it surprise you,

given the nature of the commercials,

that a lot of people would see you as a sex kitten?

-No, ´cause people see me in all different lights.

They see me -- really, however a person

wants to see another person, they can see them that way.

-Some say these commercials have brought the selling of sex

out of the porno houses and into our living rooms.

-[ Whistling "Oh, My Darling Clementine" ]

♫♫

♫♫

You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins?

Nothing.

-This has to do with power relationships

and power imbalances.

Child molestation is on the increase.

Pornographic images are filtering into the mainstream

and thereby legitimizing this kind of thing.

-♫ The people are marching... ♫

-Calvin Klein is more than just a successful fashion designer.

Some feminists say his commercials are an outrage,

their seductive, soft sell, just a masquerade for soft porn.

-I try to do -- to provoke. I try to interest.

I try to excite people. I don´t deny that.

And I will take chances with -- with advertising.

And I-I will maybe sometimes step beyond

what is considered to be good taste.

And maybe I -- maybe I do stir up some trouble.

But -- But it works.

-No ambivalence on your part

about using very young teenagers.

-So I´m a bad boy. What do you want?

-See...

-For Brooke, it was a job.

It was just fun. It was posing.

-...miraculous transformation.

-You have to ask the adults why they made the decision

to use a child to do that.

[ Cheers and applause ]

-Klein seems unconcerned about defending his commercials,

all the way to the bank. [ Cash register dings ]

-Sales at many stores shot up last month,

some by more than 30%.

-Those billboards were huge.

You couldn´t not see them.

We had to get the jeans

to be, like, seen as a potentially interesting girl.

Those Calvin Klein ads totally affected our wardrobes.

-My school wardrobe -- probably about $1,000.

-Maybe $2,000, maybe $3,000.

-More, probably.

-People became obsessed with these jeans.

It was like I was part of a movement.

-In just 90 days,

these ads boosted Calvin Klein sales by 300%.

♫♫

[ Crowd shouting ]

-When I met Brooke, she was doing this movie

that I wrote the song for, and it wasn´t,

"Hi, Mr. Ritchie. And, "Hi, Brooke."

It was, "Oh, my God, Lionel." "Hi, Brooke."

We´ve known each other forever

based on the familiarity of the television.

She would show up on everybody´s television show

no matter who it was. -Up, up, up, right!

-There´s Brooke. Hi, Brooke.

Hey, there´s Brooke. Hey, Brooke.

-Hi, I´m Brooke Shields.

[ Laughs ]

-If you don´t know who Brooke Shields is,

you have been living somewhere in a cave all by yourself.

-I heard you got your picture on the cover of a magazine.

-Yes, uh-huh.

-She gets hundreds of letters every week from teenagers.

-She is, of course, the most celebrated teenager

in the country.

-The ´80s was like a rocket,

and there´s no class you can take to prepare you for it.

-The People´s Choice is Brooke Shields.

[ Applause ]

-I had so many covers of "TV Guide" with Brooke Shields.

She was very much in my orbit and my heart,

like, saying a wave at a Studio 54

and see her and, like, Baryshnikov

and Grace Jones.

Good times, man.

-What about Brooke Shields? I mean, I see her everywhere.

-She was just being projected into some other stratosphere.

-I was on the cover of "Time" magazine

as the face of an entire era.

Who decides that? Like, I don´t do anything to my eyebrows.

Why do my eyebrows have to be a thing?

Like...really?

-I met Brooke Shields in 1986,

and she is so approachable and warm.

We´d walk through the city.

People would yell at her, "Hey, Brooke, what about those Mets?"

And she would go, "I thought they were gonna win."

And strangely enough, that´s a rare commodity in this world,

to not treat people like they are less than you.

-Not too many people understand

the front-row experience at the Grammys, at the Oscars.

I mean, she´s not only a friend, but she´s a war partner.

It was fun, but it was taxing.

Stay right there. Don´t move. Don´t you dare move.

-For the most part, the fans themselves

were just more adoring and sweet.

But there´s just a frenzy that surrounds it.

People just want a little chunk of you, you know?

And so it just became that, sort of, I was the symbol.

-A symbol is something which goes

over and above the real thing.

People have a sense of deep connection

to the representations around them.

That´s why celebrities are used for endorsements.

-Check out the label. It´s the Brooke look.

-´Cause if they touch something,

their magic comes off on that thing.

-Brooke lookers and look-alikes

and look-to-be look-alikes,

straining at the stanchions to look at the real thing.

-What´s the best part of Brooke?

Her eyes, her body. She´s -- She´s perfect.

-As a public figure, you get into this world of --

of other people´s madness all the time.

You know, that´s a hard thing for any public figure to manage.

But to be a young girl and be managing it, it´s not easy.

-Gavin ran my security detail for years and years and years

and was the first person to say,

"You know, that kid is gonna need protection.

The crazies are going to come out, you know?"

And he became my ultimate, ultimate confidant, my brother.

-But if you´re Brooke, every single person

you ever see already has seen you,

every person your eyes ever land on,

their eyes have already landed on you,

and so people had a belief that --

that Brooke belonged to them.

-♫ Brooke Shields, she´s a beautiful doll ♫

-With the Brooke Shields Glamour Center,

you can pretend to make her up for a TV commercial,

then pretend she´s on a magazine cover.

With play cosmetics, make believe she´s a glamorous model

or a beautiful 16-year-old schoolgirl.

-Brooke Shields. She´s a real living doll.

-When you first saw the doll,

you almost disconnected yourself from it.

-I did. The minute I saw it,

there were a whole bunch of little me´s.

There was -- it was it was very strange.

And then I just sort of forgot that she was supposed to be me.

-If you´re perceived a certain and branded a certain way,

you know, then you become a product.

[ Indistinct conversations ]

-I didn´t revel in that success in the ´80s.

I didn´t think, "Oh, I´ve made it."

All of those things that were sort of associated

with being these sexy personas

just didn´t feel like who I really was.

You know, and my mom -- I didn´t blame my mom,

but I wish she had had a little bit more, um...

"Oh, let´s see what this is gonna mean,

and if -- and would this come back to bite us?"

♫♫

-It´s not all glitter at the top.

Right now, Brooke Shields and her mother are involved

in a bitter lawsuit trying to block the distribution

of nude photos taken of Brooke when she was just 9 years old.

-Gary Gross was a real friend of the family.

I remember going to his studio, doing my homework in his studio,

doing catalog work.

I was 9, and he said,

"Listen, we´re doing this book for Rizzoli.

It´s Playboy Press."

It was this dual look at young girls in two different settings.

One was childlike, and the other was reserved for adults,

Book comes out. There´s no controversy.

There´s no uproar.

Cut to I´m 16, and Gary Gross -- he was gonna make a mint

by selling these photos as famous Brooke Shields now nude.

We didn´t think they would ever be used again.

So my mother was just outraged,

and so she sued him, and we went to court.

When I walked in the courtroom, there was a man.

He looked at me, literally, at one point and went...

And I was like [gasps].

What? I couldn´t believe it.

I was on the stand for two days straight.

It was just -- it was so hurtful to me.

♫♫

My public image is what was actually on trial.

It should have just been about, "Here´s the document.

This is why he owns the photos." Why put me through that?

And then the prick won.

-New York´s highest state court, the Court of Appeals,

ruled today that a photographer may publish nude pictures

of Brooke Shields -- photos that he took of the model

when she was only 10 years old.

-This just came out in the paper.

You decided that these pictures of you when you were 10

and you were nude, they now can be republished or something.

How do you feel about that?

It´s hard to say. I mean, I´m just --

I´m confused, you know, just like everybody else is,

I think now. I don´t know.

Things happen for the best, I guess.

-It seems almost like a rite of passage

that teenage girls are the ones who get their asses kicked

in the public square.

If we know that a girl is a tomboy,

we know how to talk to her.

If we know that she´s a whore, we know how to talk to her.

If we know that she´s a virgin and she´s pious and she´s sweet

and she´s wearing a virginity ring,

we know how to talk to her.

If we know that she puts out on the first date,

we know we don´t have to give her any respect.

It´s really a question of, "Do I need to treat this person

like they have any dignity?"

And the answer should be, "Yes," no matter what, but it´s not.

-I was hurt more by the -- the breach of trust and friendship

than I ever was uncomfortable about the nature of the photo.

It was the way I was treated by the men

associated with the whole thing.

It was as low rent, low class -- there was zero integrity in it.

And to me, that was so angering and hurtful.

I mean, the entirety of my life,

over and over and over and over and over again,

it was, "She´s a pretty face. She´s a sex symbol."

And that always just seared me

because a nerdy, kind of dorky person

who was creative and intelligent,

was at the core of who I was.

♫♫

"Endless Love" is about a teenage girl who falls in love

with a teenage boy.

It´s sort of that primal,

"nothing else matters except for this person,"

But then it gets interfered with by the adults.

-And when you had a chance to star her in this movie,

you didn´t hesitate a second.

What did you see in her that is so special?

-Well, you are talking about somebody who is madly in love

with this girl, so, you know, it´s very easy -- the answer.

I was in love with her before I met her.

-How do you work with a Brooke Shields,

who is just barely -- not quite 16,

a youngster this age about a serious subject like lovemaking?

How do you -- How do you approach it?

How did you -- How did you work with her on it?

-Well, she´s quite a competent, little, young actress.

-The physicality and the exploration of sexuality

felt really dangerous to me.

And I didn´t trust the director

to create a safe environment for me.

-In Hollywood cinema, girls are considered

to be valuable for their budding sexuality.

When sexuality is a commodity, you can sell the illusion

of destroying virginity over and over again.

-There is this scene

sex for the first time.

When I had the camera on her, she was not giving

exactly that impact that the scene requires,

so I was there, and the camera was here,

and I kind of grabbed the toe and twisted it,

and she screamed that -- "Aah!"

Zeffirelli kept grabbing my toe and, like, twisting it

so that I had a feeling -- so I had a look of -- of sort of,

I guess, ecstasy,

but it was more angst than anything

because he was hurting me.

You know, his thing was, "The look on your face --

it has to be ecstasy."

And I was like, "I don´t know what that is."

I didn´t want to appear stupid or untalented,

so I just disassociated.

It´s like you, in an instant, zooming out,

seeing a situation, but you are not connected to it.

You instantly become a vapor of yourself

around something that´s happening.

-Dissociation is a disconnection

between the body and the mind,

which protects both the body and the psyche,

but at enormous cost.

It´s hard to feel in control of yourself

because you´re not feeling anything.

-I was really shut down after that.

I thought of myself as just the --

sort of the -- the workhorse.

They paid me. I did the thing. They sold it.

Everybody´s happy. You know, it was transactional.

[ Indistinct conversations ]

The part that´s visual to other people

is very glamorous, and it´s very sparkly,

and it´s very fun and pretty and happy.

But there is another side to it.

Those are the -- the problems that I´ve had to deal with,

growing up with my parents and everything.

-Rolling.

Rolling.

-I knew what to expect from my work.

You never really knew what to expect with an alcoholic.

It wasn´t abusive, but it was emotionally abusive

because I felt sort of abandoned every time she wasn´t herself.

So I asked my godmother, she did some research,

and there was a place that was literally around the corner.

They educated me on interventions

and what that meant, and -- and they said,

"Okay, this is how it´s done.

It´s kind of a -- it´s kind of an ambush."

I said all the things that I had sort of rehearsed in my head

about, "how much I love you, Mom,

but you´re -- you change when you drink,

and I-I don´t want you to die," and all of this stuff,

and, "I love you," and she said,

"All right, I´ll go, but I´m not going for me.

I´m going for you. I´ll go for you," she said.

-Teri, you can´t pick up a magazine article

or anything that´s been written about Brooke recently

that doesn´t talk about the fact that you had a drinking problem.

-Yes. That´s true. I did have.

I´ve stopped drinking. It got the best of me.

And I´m much happier as a human being.

Maybe she stayed sober a couple of --

I couldn´t tell if it was a week or a month.

But it didn´t last.

She basically told me, "Fuck you, I´m not doing this."

And she´s like, "No one´s gonna control me.

They´ve tried. They´re not going to.

Neither will you." And it was her defiance.

"I don´t need anybody. I was born alone.

I´m gonna die alone," and all that.

And she was just acting from heartbreak, you know?

She was broken.

-Do you have any secrets from your mother?

-There are just certain little things

that I might just not want to tell.

I mean, I really haven´t -- here haven´t been anything --

-Don´t tell them here. [ Both chuckle ]

So I don´t -- I mean, we tell each other

just everything that I feel I should tell her.

-She was getting older.

I sort of wondered how the dance was going to be

when she would have to assume control of that relationship.

When were the boundaries going to come?

How in the world was that going to happen?

♫♫

-Ladies and gentlemen,

a member of the Princeton class of 1987, Brooke Shields.

-Hello. [ Chuckles ]

-This fall, you go to college, Brooke.

-Yes, I do.

-You looking forward to that? -Very much so.

When you hear of a school like Princeton or Harvard,

you think that you´re never gonna get in,

but my grades were good, and I am a very hard worker.

So, you know, I think that they realized that,

and I was very glad.

I had always had a dream of what university was.

You know, I saw it in movies.

You had the ivy and the old buildings and the arches.

I wanted that experience.

Education was sort of the one thing

that my dad could feel good about.

You know, there were very few of us who had been actresses

that went to college.

Actresses weren´t considered more valuable

if they were smart.

-At the time, of course,

she really was breaking the glass

because a sex symbol doesn´t go to Princeton.

-I was shocked, and I was mortified that I was shocked.

We assumed that she was, you know, all beauty

and no brains, which is ridiculous.

-A lot of students were sort of diligently avoiding her.

Princeton attracts a certain type,

and everyone thinks highly of themself, and they´re like,

"Well, I´m not gonna be sucked into that circus."

-It was so lonely, It was so lonely,

and people tried to be so nice.

They just tried to give me my space.

And I was like, "I don´t want space.

I want to go home or I want friends.

Please don´t respect me. Please don´t respect my space."

So I went from people charging at me

to people completely avoiding me.

And then I just missed my mommy.

We´ve even talked about that in interviews.

That umbilical cord had never been cut.

-We speak a lot on the phone.

I´ve limited the calls to...

-Three.

-Five. -Well...

-She´s embarrassed. -Five a week?

-Five a day. -Hardly. Five a day.

-Oh, a day?! -Usually it´s like -- see,

I get in the morning, and I call her,

and then I usually go to classes, and then I call her,

and then maybe after lunch, I´ll just call her

and tell her how the day went, and then before I go to bed.

I called my mom.

I was like, "Mom, I think I need to come home.

I have to come home."

And by the just grace,

it was killing her to not have me home.

I could hear it in her voice.

But there was something that she pulled

from somewhere really deep, and she said, "Honey,

you´ll never forgive yourself.

You will be so mad at yourself

if you don´t follow through on this."

That was the biggest sacrifice my mom knowingly made

against her deep heart and soul,

because she never intended on life without me.

I was called in to the dean of the college´s office,

and he looked at me, and he said,

"Do you feel that you can have your own hypotheses?"

I looked him and I said

I felt that I can take other people´s hypotheses

and expound upon them, but as far as originating,

I´ve never felt confident enough in the opinions that I have.

This professor said, "I see you underline your books,

I noticed." And I said, "Yes." He said, "All right.

Tomorrow in precept, I want you to talk about

what you underlined."

And I waited till the end of class,

and I thought, "Oh, maybe it´s a bullet dodged."

And he, like, looked at me and he said, "Miss Shields?"

And I was like, "Um...well..."

and it was this one theme that stuck out for me.

I don´t know -- remember what it was.

And a whole discussion was spurred from that one line.

And I was walking out of class, and he said,

"Have faith in your own hypothesis, Brooke."

And that was the beginning of, "I can have my own opinion."

Up until then, I would wait for my mother

or for somebody to tell me

what is the important piece in this information.

Directors never asked me what I thought about a character.

But I learned I could think for myself.

-I was happy that she could concentrate on her own mind

and figure out what did she think about things.

-That´s also not appealing to Hollywood, you know --

an actress who can think for herself.

-Back to school.

Did you see the picture of Brooke Shields

in the paper the other day?

She is a freshman at Princeton University,

and she is doing very well in her classes.

As a matter of fact, her professor today gave her an "A."

Biology professor gave her an "A" in anatomy -- hers.

-The more public scrutiny and criticism I experienced,

the more I thought, "Oh, hell, no,

you´re not taking this away from me."

So it -- it kind of morphed into this big rebellion.

♫♫

♫♫

When I tried out for the Triangle Club,

I found all the really creative guys and girls.

We just wanted to do comedy and musicals,

and it was fun.

[ Indistinct conversations ]

This was the place that I could learn and be safe

and make a fool of myself if I -- if I had to,

and I have.

I found my confidence.

It was a world that I just absorbed as much as I could.

I´m very involved in school.

I mean, I don´t even go home anymore.

And I -- freshman year, I was home

the -- all the time, every weekend.

And now I don´t go home at all.

I had always taken care of my mother.

So leaving her alone...

that was like, you know, letting her move into a bar.

The thing that I was the most bound by was not the manager,

but it was the alcoholic mother.

You know, that´s where the pain sort of starts and stops,

is loving an alcoholic.

Like, that´s really hard to get out from under.

-She out and out told me she´s grown up

and it was hard for me to understand that

because we´re so close, and we´re still working on that.

-I was gonna leave her like everybody else left her --

the little kid that she strapped to her chest.

It was the beginning of the end to her.

[ "Pomp and Circumstance" playing ]

-Brooke, growing up and becoming a sovereign being

was a threat for Teri.

She did not want her to have autonomy.

Most young teenagers get away from their parents

in a more organic way.

And here there was no getting away

because there was then the career.

Brooke really was looking for that independence,

but also, Teri was her manager, her professional manager.

-What now for you? What now?

-I´ll just continue working.

I would like to concentrate on making films.

-It´s also a fact that Brooke was dealing with her sovereignty

with the whole world, not just with her mother, right?

She was looking for sovereignty around all people

who owned her to some degree, or felt they did.

-With a lot of famous women,

there´s always a sense that the public owns them,

and they have to behave in a way to make sure

that the public doesn´t one day turn on them.

They can´t just live in the world freely.

They have to be put in some sort of a pen.

All of that is rooted in anxiety about women having control.

We don´t like it. It really stresses us out.

We don´t know what´s gonna happen.

We don´t know what it´s gonna mean for us. We don´t trust it.

-It has a larger purpose that is about, really, keeping society

under a certain kind of control.

-The tendency to become the projection onto you

is very strong. -Mm-hmm.

-Speaking is a way of expressing agency.

It really is.

Sharing your opinion is a way of expressing your agency.

It also makes you vulnerable.

-It didn´t really occur to me

to have my own opinions for a long time.

I thought, "Just listen to everybody,

you know, and take what they say."

-She is your child.

Even though Brooke becomes a woman,

she´s still your daughter.

-Yes, and that´s hard. It´s a hard --

-I would think it would be harder for the parent.

-You´re right. You´re right. [ Laughter ]

-I spent my life owing people things

and doing whatever they wanted.

And finally, I asked myself,

"Who will I be if -- if I don´t allow that anymore?"

♫♫

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