Encyclopedia
Brooke Christa Camille Shields is an
American actress and former fashion model.
Biography
Career
The 6-foot tall Shields' career as a model began in the
1960s as an infant, and she continued as a successful child model throughout the
1970s. In early 1980 , Shields was the youngest fashion model to ever appear on the cover of the top fashion publication
Vogue magazine. Later that same year , Shields appeared in controversial print and TV ads for
Calvin Klein jeans. The TV ad included her saying the famous tagline, "Nothing comes between me and my Calvins." By the age of 16, Shields had become one of the most recognizable faces in the world because of her dual career as a provocative fashion model and controversial child actress.
Shields's film career began in 1978 with her appearance in Louis Malle's
Pretty Baby, a movie in which she played a child living in a brothel . Because she was only 12 when the film was released, and possibly 11 when it was filmed, questions were raised about child pornography. This was followed by a slightly less controversial, but also less notable film,
Wanda Nevada .
After two decades of movies, her best-known films are still arguably
The Blue Lagoon , and
Endless Love . She won the People's Choice Award in the category of Favorite Young Performer in four consecutive years from 1981 to 1984.
Shields put her film career on hold to attend
Princeton University from 1983 to 1987, graduating with a degree in French literature. Her senior thesis was titled
The Initiation: From Innocence to Experience: The Pre-Adolescent/Adolescent Journey in the Films of Louis Malle, "Pretty Baby" and "Lacombe Lucien." During her tenure at Princeton, Shields was a member of the Cap and Gown Club.
In 1984, she was
Michael Jackson's date to the
Grammy Awards and also dated him for a brief period.
Shields has appeared in a number of television shows, the most successful being the NBC
sitcom Suddenly Susan was a US-American sitcom [i] broadcast on NBC [i] from 1996 [i] to 2000 [i]. ...
, in which she starred from 1996 until 2000, and which earned her a People's Choice Award in the category of Favorite Female Performer in a New Television Series in 1997.
Shields has appeared in many on-stage productions, mostly musical revivals, including
Grease,
Cabaret,
Wonderful Town is a musical with lyrics by Betty Comden [i] and Adolph Green [i] and music by Leonard Bernstein [i] ...
and
Chicago on
Broadway; she also performed in
Chicago in London's West End.
Shields made a couple of guest appearances on
That '70s Show is an American [i] television [i] sitcom [i] that c...
. She played Mrs. Burkhart, Jackie's mother, who later was briefly involved with Donna's father . Shields left
That '70s Show when her character was written out.
Personal life
Shields was born in
New York City into an aristocratic family ; her father was the late Francis Alexander Shields and her mother is Teri Shields . Brooke's parents divorced when she was a small child. Her father remarried Diana Lippert, the former wife of Thomas Gore Auchincloss .
Brooke has three half sisters: Marina Torlonia Shields , Olympia, and Christiana Shields. Also, she has two stepsiblings: Diana Luise Auchincloss and Thomas Gore Auchincloss Jr.
Actor/comedian
Eddie Murphy, in his concert film,
Eddie Murphy: Raw, called Shields "the whitest woman in America". Her paternal grandparents are
Francis Xavier Shields, a tennis star of Irish descent, and Italian princess Donna Marina Torlonia di Civitella-Cesi, who was a sister of Don Alessandro Torlonia, 5th Prince di Civitella-Cesi, husband of the spanish Infanta Doña Beatriz de Borbón y Battenberg . Their granddaughter, Sibilla Weiller , Brooke's cousin, married
Prince Guillaume of Luxembourg , the youngest brother of
Henri, Grand Duke of Luxembourg, in 1994.
Through her Italian grandmother, Shields is a descendant of
Lucrezia Borgia,
Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, Honoré I of Monaco and
Henry IV of France. Shields is "a 23rd generation descendant of Francesco I Gattilusio, the founder of the Lesbian Gattilusii dynasty," according to the monograph "The Lesbos Island Ancestors of Prince Rainier of Monaco, Dr. Otto von Habsburg, Brooke Shields, and the Marquis de Sade."[1]
Through her Irish grandfather, the branch of the Shields family from which Brooke Shields descends, traces its ancestry to William Shields, born 1600, at
Lough Neagh in County Armagh and killed in County Antrim in 1655. He had four sons, William, James, Daniel, and John. William & James were deported by Cromwell to
Barbados in 1655 . Both relocated to Middle Plantation in 1658 as indentured servants. James and his descendents became tavern-keepers. Shields Tavern is a restored public house in Colonial Williamsburg. John Shields, the gunsmith of the
Lewis & Clark expedition was of this line as was United States President
John Tyler through his mother. William migrated to
Kent County, Maryland where he gave rise to the prominent Tennessee political clan, the
New Orleans family of white jazz musicians. The third brother, Daniel, was a Catholic partisan who would die in the
Battle of the Boyne in 1690. His son, one of the
Wild Geese, associated with the Spanish and wound up in Cuba as governor general. Other descendents include the Civil War General James Shields, who would become U.S. Senator in three different states. The youngest of the four sons, John , died on his voyage to America in 1732. His son William Shields was fostered by the
Kent County, Maryland cousins and would found
Emmitsburg, Maryland. Among many notable descendents were Arthur Shields, a controversial 19th-century Presbyterian, who was expelled from
Princeton University and from this branche belongs Brooke Shields.
When Shields was a young starlet in the 1980s, her romantic relationships were the subject of many tabloid articles. Among the celebrities she dated in her youth were
Ted McGinley, who took her to her high school prom,
Prince Albert II of Monaco and
Michael Jackson, who took her as his date to the
Grammy Awards . She was married from April 19, 1997 to April 9, 1999 to professional
tennis player
Andre Agassi. Since April 4, 2001 she has been married to
television writer Chris Henchy. They have two daughters: Rowan Francis and Grier Hammond . Coincidentally, Shields' second child was born on the same day and in the same hospital as the first child of
Katie Holmes and
Tom Cruise.
Postpartum depression
In the spring of 2005, Shields spoke to magazines and appeared on
The Oprah Winfrey Show is an American [i] nationally syndicated [i] ...
to publicize her battle with postpartum depression, an experience that included
depression, thoughts of
suicide, an inability to respond to her baby's needs, and delayed maternal bonding. The illness may have been triggered by a traumatic
childbirth, the death of her father three weeks earlier, stress from
in vitro fertilisation, a miscarriage, and a family history of depression, as well as the hormones and life changes brought on by childbirth. Her book,
Down Came the Rain, discusses her experience.
In May 2005 former co-star
Tom Cruise, a
Scientologist whose religion frowns on psychiatry, excoriated Shields for both using and speaking in favor of the antidepressant drug
Paxil. Cruise also said, "Here is a woman, and I care about Brooke Shields because I think she is an incredibly talented woman, you look at [and think], where has her career gone?" Shields responded that Cruise's statements about anti-depressants were "irresponsible" and "dangerous." She said he should "stick to fighting aliens", , "and let mothers decide the best way to treat postpartum depression." Shields responded to a further attack by Cruise in an essay published in
The New York Times is a newspaper [i] published in New York City [i] by Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. [i] ...
on July 1, 2005, in which she made an individual case for the medication . On Thursday, August 31, 2006, according to USAToday.com , Cruise privately apologized to Shields for the incident, and Shields accepted, saying it was "heartfelt".
Filmography
Film
- Communion Also Known as Alice Sweet Alice
- King of the Gypsies
- Pretty Baby
- An Almost Perfect Affair
- Tilt
- Just You and Me, Kid
- Wanda Nevada
- The Blue Lagoon
- Endless Love
- Sahara
- The Muppets Take Manhattan
- Speed Zone!
- Brenda Starr
- Backstreet Dreams
- Running Wild
- Legends of the West
- Freaked
- I Can Make You Love Me
- The Seventh Floor
- Freeway
- Scratch the Surface
- Junket Whore
- The Misadventures of Margaret
- The Weekend
- Black and White
- The Bachelor
- After Sex
- Massholes
- Mayor of the Sunset Strip
- Rent-a-Husband
- The Easter Egg Adventure
- The Outsider
- Bob the Butler
- The Last Guy on Earth
Television
- After the Fall
- The Prince of Central Park
- Wet Gold
- The Diamond Trap
- The Simpsons
- I Can Make You Love Me
- An American Love
- Nothing Lasts Forever
- Suddenly Susan
- Friends
- The Almost Perfect Bank Robbery
- What Makes a Family
- Widows
- Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends
- Gone But Not Forgotten
- That '70s Show
- Nip Tuck
Publication
External links
