It’s also a story about the beauty of telling one’s truth.
“Doing the documentary, you see it all together, and it’s a miracle that I survived,” says the 57-year-old actress in this week’s PEOPLE.
“It’s taken me a long time to process it,” says Shields, of the assault that occurred in her 20s. “I’m more angry now than I was able to be then. If you’re afraid, you’re rightfully so. They are scary situations. They don’t have to be violent to be scary.”
At the time, she was a recent Princeton University graduate and unable to find much work, the “lowest point of my career,” she recalls.
After dinner with a Hollywood executive (“I thought I was getting a movie, a job”), he invited her to make a call for a cab from his hotel room. There, he assaulted her. “I didn’t fight,” as she recounts in the documentary. “I just froze.”
Michael Schwartz
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Afterward, she blamed herself. “I kept saying, ‘I shouldn’t have done that. Why did I go up with him? I shouldn’t have had that drink at dinner.’ "
Shields had learned to compartmentalize early on as a way to deal with the intensity of the attention. “I’d always had a sense of disassociation from my body. From my sexuality,” she says. “I was mostly a cover girl, so it’s all here,” Shields adds, indicating from her neck up, “And it was just easier to shut myself off. I was good at it.”
Now, she’s sharing her experience “with the hopes of helping people not feel alone,” she says. “Everybody processes their own trauma on a different timeline. I want to be an advocate for women to be able to speak their truth.”
Brooke Shields on the cover of PEOPLE.Michael Schwartz
Long married to comedy writer and director Chris Henchy, 58, with whom she hastwo daughters, Rowan, 19, and Grier, 16, her latest passion is the online community and wellness platform she launched in 2021,Beginning Is Now, which could also be her motto. “The goal is to ignite a spark in women over 40 to revel in what we’ve done,” she says, “and enjoy his next beautiful chapter.”
As her friend de Becker sees it, Brooke “more than survived, she thrived, and became this wise, beautiful spirit who helped so many people through her honesty and courage.”
“I saw someone who gradually gained agency over her own life,” says the documentary’s director, Lana Wilson. “Brooke was open, game for anything, fearless. The only concern she voiced at that first meeting was that this wouldn’t be deep enough.”
“Nothing scares her,” adds Wilson. “If something is intimidating or challenging or risky, that means she’s going to want to do it even more.”
In the end, it’s also a testament to perseverance. Says Brooke with a smile, “I always kept going, like a bull in a china shop.… I will not be defeated.”
For more on Brooke Shields, pick up this week’s issue ofPEOPLE, on newsstands everywhere on Friday.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go torainn.org.
source: people.com
