Last Sunday, Demi Moore accepted her first major acting award at the Golden Globes. Watching from home was Brooke Shields “My kids’ll be like, ‘Oh, it’s Golden Globe night. Get the bottle of wine for Mom! Get the tequila!'” Shields laughed. “It’s so interesting, these award shows, right? They can be torturous if you sit there and you go like, Why am I not valid enough to get that, do that, whatever?“
I asked, “You’ve felt that?”
“I’ve felt it my entire life.”
It can be surprising to hear that a veteran actress like Shields yearns for acceptance. Turns out she’s totally human. “I was listening to Demi, ‘We’ve weren’t the ones that ever got awards.’ Like, no. I got People’s Choice Awards! The people loved me.”
“So, you get the People’s Choice Award, but you wanted the Emmy, the Oscar?”
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“You just wanted, like, to be part of the group, the cool kids,” said Shields. “That’s where the little insecure girl comes out.”
At this point in her career of six decades, the comedienne has earned the right to laugh at herself.
Currently 59, Shields said she feels 38. “I definitely feel a youthfulness that I didn’t feel in my younger years,” she said.
She started modeling while wearing diapers. Later, she turned heads wearing Calvin Klein jeans. Shields was expected to sell products and say her lines, all while looking gorgeous. She delivered.
But as she approaches 60, she’s found a cultural script she’s powerfully rejecting.
“By the time you get to 50, they’ve just completely written you off,” she said. “You are out to pasture. Society says, ‘Oh, if you’re not the hot twenty-something at the bar, you’re an old lady.’ There’s this whole demo in the middle that gets just overlooked.”
Flatiron
It’s those overlooked women for whom Shields has written her fourth book: “Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old” (to be published Tuesday by Flatiron). “When you are someone that has been noted for looking a certain way, by virtue of just growing older, you become a disappointment, in a way,” she said. “I’ve watched people get sort of personally affronted that I dare to be 60!”
“And what do you say to them?”
“I just sort of feel bad for them,” Shields said. “And I’m a part of the problem, because I was that symbol, you know, maybe unwittingly. But I didn’t set out to do that.”
Nearly 44 years after being named the face of a decade, Shields hopes to be a voice for her generation – empowering women by sharing her personal and at times vulnerable experiences.
In her book, she reveals that a doctor performed a surgery on her that she did not consent to. “I was asked by my gynecologist if I experienced discomfort, and I said yes.”
In the late 2000s, Shields went to a surgeon to help reduce some labia discomfort. But after the operation, she says she found out he performed an extra procedure: an unwanted vaginal rejuvenation. “He literally looked at me and said, like, ‘I tightened you up a bit,'” Shields said. “And I was like, ‘What?’ And he just sort of was, like, boasting that he ‘threw in a little bonus’ for me. And I was in such shock that I just, I became numb. I didn’t even know what to do.”
“What did you say?”
“I didn’t say it, I didn’t say a thing. because it sounded like he wanted me to thank him,” Shields replied. “I didn’t say anything then, and this is the first time I’ve said anything.”
That so-called bonus surgery has had lasting side effects. The actress and model says sex can be painful.
“This was, you know, a long time ago. We didn’t know what we could fight or complain. I finally had a life and kids, and it was like, ‘Dear God, I don’t want that kind of attention,'” she said.
So, why is she speaking out now? “Because I have daughters. And there’s no shame around it. And the more we have those conversations with them, conversations that I never had, the more progress I think we will have as women.”
Shields is looking to make progress in other ways, too. In May, she was elected president of Actors’ Equity Association, the union representing 51,000 actors and stage managers around the country. As a five-time Broadway star, she felt a responsibility to give back to a community that’s embraced her.
She’s already taken her fight to Washington for more funding and to change tax policy. “It’s been a learning curve,” she said. “It’s trial by fire. I’d never gone on the Hill and met with Congressmen and Senators. But you know, producers need to take care of the people that bleed for them on a daily basis.”
Besides being a union boss, Shields is now a CEO. She’d founded the beauty brand Commence, after hearing concerns from aging women about their hair. “They have felt overlooked, and that’s just the truth,” she said. “They’re not being marketed to.”
Asked what the hardest part of being a CEO is, Shields replied, “Money raising. Keeping the money flowing, because you have to put it right back into the company. And you know, nobody’s getting salaries yet. Least I’m not!” she laughed.
Don’t ask Brooke Shields if she’s ready to slow down. Age has brought wisdom, and she’s just getting started.
“I’m, you know, going to be 60 years old,” she said. “I’m still here. I feel like I’m at the beginning of a new, really exciting stage. The more confident you get – isn’t it interesting – the more opportunity you get. And yet, you couldn’t have arrived at said confidence without going through all the time to get here.”
READ AN EXCERPT: “Brooke Shields is Not Allowed to Get Old”
WEB EXTRA: Watch an extended interview with Brooke Shields
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Story produced by Michelle Kessel. Editor: George Pozderec.
