Inside Brooke Shields’ tragic rise to fame… from posing bare as a child to being raped at age 22

To some, it may look like Brooke Shields had a dream childhood – thanks to her booming modeling and acting careers, she spent much of her upbringing jetting across the globe, attending A-list events, and posing for cameras.

But if you peel back the curtain, the actress’ meteoric rise to fame has been a lot less dazzling than one might think.

Becoming one of the biggest child stars on the planet came at a cost, as Brooke’s life has continuously been plagued by tragedy and turmoil.

It started with her ‘complicated’ relationship with her ‘alcoholic’ momager, who ‘controlled’ everything she did and would body shame her when she got drunk.

The star, now 59, has also spoken out about how she was unfairly ‘sexualized’ at a young age, as she was forced to pose naked for Playboy at 10 before portraying a child prostitute in a film when she was 11.

In addition, she famously starred in a sexually-driven Calvin Klein ad at age 15, and was publicly grilled about her sexual history and measurements on live television while promoting the campaign.

Brooke once admitted of her child and teenage years in the spotlight, ‘Sometimes I’m amazed that I survived any of it.’ 

But things didn’t get easier for Brooke during her adult years.

Not only has she revealed that a doctor once performed a surgical procedure on her vagina without her permission – which she described as an ‘irreversible invasion’ – but she also has spoken out about how she was raped in a hotel room by an unnamed man at age 22.

The former child star also went through a very public divorce and suffered from severe postpartum depression after welcoming her first child, which left her contemplating ending her life.

Over the course of her decades-long career, Brooke has additionally faced a slew of health woes – including a terrifying seizure that saw her ‘foaming from the mouth’ and a horrifying injury that resulted in her needing multiple surgeries and developing a life-threatening infection.

Brooke is now set to lay bare her roller-coaster ride journey in her upcoming memoir, Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old: Thoughts on Aging as a Woman, which will hit stands on January 14.

As the world prepares for the unflinchingly honest new tome, FEMAIL has taken a look back at the many tribulations that Brooke has had to overcome.

From her harrowing years as a child star and her ‘controlling’ mother to her mental health struggles and failed marriage, here are all the devastations that the mother-of-two has faced.

Sexualized at a young age: Brooke posed nude for Playboy at age 10 and portrayed a child prostitute when she was just 11 years old

Brooke started modeling when she was just 11 months old, when she appeared in an ad for Ivory Soap.

She went on to become one of the most successful child models of all time, starring in a slew of campaigns for enormous companies like Gerber, Calvin Klein, and Vogue.

She also stepped into the world of acting at a young age, making her debut in the horror film Alice, Sweet Alice in 1976, when she was 10.

But Brooke has been fiercely honest about how she was ‘sexualized’ as a child.

Not only did the star pose nude for Playboy at only 10 years old, but she also played a child prostitute in the 1978 movie Pretty Baby, when she was 11, and was forced to kiss her then-27-year-old costar, Keith Carradine, for the flick.

In addition, the actress recalled how the director of the 1981 movie Endless Love twisted her toe during a sex scene to try to get her to make an ‘ecstasy face’ when she was just 15 years old in her 2023 Hulu documentary, entitled Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields.

She said director Franco Zeffirelli’s behavior on set made her feel so uncomfortable that she had to ‘disassociate’ from herself for the rest of production. 

‘His thing was, “The look on your face it has to be ecstasy.” But it was more angst than anything, because he was hurting me,’ she recalled.

‘I thought as myself as just the sort of the workhorse. It was transactional. I didn’t want to appear stupid or untalented, so I just disassociated.

‘You instantly become a vapor of yourself around something that’s happening to you. 

‘The physicality and the exploration of sexuality felt really dangerous to me. I didn’t trust the director to create a safe environment for me.’

She also slammed The Blue Lagoon director Randal Kleiser for trying to exploit her ‘sexual awakening’ in the documentary.

The film follows two young cousins who get marooned on an island and discover ‘sex, love, and loneliness,’ according to its synopsis, and starred Brooke when she was 14 years old. 

‘They wanted to make it reality show,’ Brooke said in the doc. ‘They wanted to sell my actual sexual awakening.’ 

Brooke also famously starred in a campaign for Calvin Klein at age 15, in which she was seen saying to the camera: ‘You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.’

In December 2021, the star hit out at Barbara Walters over a 1981 interview which saw the acclaimed journalist grill a then-15-year-old Brooke about her sexual history and measurements.

‘It’s practically criminal. It is not journalism,’ she scathed on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast.

Her complicated relationship with her ‘alcoholic’ mother: Brooke’s mom ‘controlled’ everything she did and would body shame her after getting drunk

Over the years, Brooke has spoken out about how her childhood was rocked by her complicated relationship with her ‘alcoholic’ mother, Teri.

Teri was a model and actress herself and served as Brooke’s manager for many years.

In her 2014 memoir, There Was A Little Girl: The Real Story Of My Mother And Me, Brooke revealed that her mom became an alcoholic when she was just an infant after her father, Frank, left them.

She explained that because her mom was the only person she had, their bond became ‘so intense.’

‘I thought she was God, I thought she could change the weather. It was us against the world,’ she wrote. 

‘It’s so innate when you’re an only child of a single mother,’ she added to The Sunday Times in April 2024. 

‘All you want to do is love your parent and keep them alive forever, and so I wanted to protect her.

‘And by virtue of protecting her, I was justifying everything, and that solidified that bond between us.’

Brooke told Porter Edit in 2018 that when her mother got drunk, she would lash out at her, and even body shame her.

‘My mother would get drunk and say: “Why don’t you move your fat a**?” So, I’ve always believed I had a fat a**,’ she recalled.

She also slammed her mom for not giving her the ‘tools that she needed’ in her upcoming book, Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed To Get Old, which comes out on January 14.

‘My mother hadn’t given me the tools I needed. She controlled me so much, in every possible way, that when I went to college and had to navigate the world on my own, I was in shock,’ she recalled in an exclusive excerpt obtained by DailyMail.com. ‘I was like an open wound. Totally vulnerable.

‘Obviously, my relationship with my own mother was complicated. My whole life I went to her for absolutely everything.

‘Yes, I feared being judged or reprimanded. Yes, I was guilt-ridden whenever I thought my behavior would disappoint her.

‘And yet the pull to her was so strong. A magnetic field surrounded her, and even when I knew better, I was always pulled back in. Love is a very powerful motivator.’

Teri passed away in 2012 aged 79 from an illness related to dementia. 

Her ‘lonely’ Princeton years: Brooke said she had no friends in college because everyone was scared of being sucked into her ‘Hollywood circus’

Brooke took a hiatus from her successful movie and modeling career in the 1980s to study at Princeton University, where she majored in Romance language and literatures, focusing on French literature, before graduating with honors in 1987. 

But in her Hulu documentary, she laid bare her miserable and ‘lonely’ college experience, claiming that she had no friends because students didn’t want to ‘get sucked in to the Hollywood circus.’

‘It was so lonely, it was so lonely. And people tried to be so nice, just tried to give me my space,’ Brooke said. 

‘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’d just miss my mommy… that umbilical cord had never been cut.’ 

Her friend Isobel Colman added that many of the students ‘diligently avoided’ Brooke because they didn’t want to be ‘sucked into’ the Hollywood ‘circus.’

Eventually, Brooke did find her feet after she joined the Princeton Triangle Club, which is described as ‘the nation’s oldest touring collegiate musical comedy troupe.’ 

‘I found all the really creative guys and girls, we just wanted to do comedy and musicals, and it was fun,’ she added. 

Her shocking sex admissions: Brooke was ‘terrified’ of getting intimate during her 20s and said she had ‘so much guilt’ after losing her virginity at age 22

Elsewhere in the Hulu doc, Brooke revealed how she lost her virginity at age 22 to actor Dean Cain, but immediately ‘regretted’ it.

‘When we finally had sex, I immediately ran out of the room, ran down the hall butt naked, just running. I didn’t know where I was going,’ she recalled. 

‘He ran after me with the duvet and grabbed a hold of me and said, “Where are you going?” 

‘He said, “I’m not going anywhere, I’m not leaving you, you’re the same person.” He got it immediately and I just cried. 

Looking back, she said she was baffled by her reaction to sex, saying: ‘I feel bad for that girl. 

‘She was old enough to own her own body [but] I just couldn’t get there at that moment.’ 

In her new tome, Brooke revealed that after she ‘stupidly confided’ in her mother about losing her virginity, she began to ‘shame her about it.’ 

‘Stupidly, I guiltily confided in my mother after I lost my virginity and, once she knew, whenever she’d get drunk she’d shame me about it,’ she wrote.

‘”I know it’s just physical between you two,” she’d sneer. The start of my sex life was a personal affront to her, because having a man in my life meant that she was losing me.’

Brooke also admitted to Yahoo Life in December 2021 that she was ‘terrified’ of sex during her 20s. 

‘I thought I was committing an offense to humanity for being a Catholic, not married, and I had so much guilt,’ she shared.

‘It wasn’t until my 40s that I started thinking of sex as my experience, not someone else’s experience that I just navigated.’

The harrowing sexual assault: Brooke said she was raped in a hotel room as she tried to get back into Hollywood after graduating at age 22

Brooke once revealed that she was raped following her graduation from Princeton in 1987.

She explained in the Hulu documentary that she was trying to get back into Hollywood after college, and had dinner with an unnamed man to talk about potential projects.

She claimed that the man then invited her to come back to his hotel with him and attacked her. 

‘He’s right on me. [We were] just, like, wrestling,’ she said, adding that she didn’t fight harder out of fear.

‘I was afraid I’d get choked out or something, so I didn’t fight that much. I didn’t. I just absolutely froze,’ continued the star.

‘I thought one “no” should’ve been enough, and I just thought, “Stay alive and get out,” and I just shut it out.

‘God knows I knew how to be disassociated from my body. I’d practiced that.’

She said she left the hotel after the attack, got in a cab, and ‘cried all the way to her friend’s apartment.’

She also revealed that she wrote to her attacker years later, but he never responded.

‘I just threw my hands up and said, “You know what, I refuse to be a victim because this is something that happens no matter who you are and no matter what you think you’re prepared for or not,”‘ she added.

‘I wanted to erase the whole thing from my mind and body and just keep on the path I was on.

‘The system had never once come to help me. So, I just had to get stronger on my own.’

The non-consensual surgery: Brooke said a doctor once performed a vaginal rejuvenation on her without her permission

Brooke revealed in her memoir that a doctor once performed a shocking medical procedure on her without her consent.

She explained that she suffered from major discomfort due to the length of her labia for years – including chafing and bleeding – and decided to undergo surgery to fix it.

But when she visited her Beverly Hills surgeon for a check-up after the surgery, the model said he ‘proudly’ told her that he had thrown in a vaginal rejuvenation, calling it ‘a little twofer.’

However, she had not asked or consented to the procedure. 

According to Cleveland Clinic, vaginal rejuvenation ‘can be done for cosmetic reasons or to solve age-related problems, such as lack of vaginal tightness and urinary incontinence.’

The Mother of the Bride actress said she was ‘dumbfounded’ and compared the ‘irreversible… invasion’ to a ‘rape of some kind.’ 

‘I was horrified, but also at a loss. I didn’t want to sue this man – or maybe I did want to, but I didn’t feel I could because I didn’t particularly want talk of my lady parts, once again, on the front page of every paper,’ she wrote.

She also told NPR of the incident, ‘My shock and my disappointment was so acute, but it felt so familiar. 

‘It just felt like, “oh, here we go again… I don’t know why you think it’s going to be any different, Brooke.”‘

Brooke said she hid the rejuvenation from her husband, writer and producer Chris Henchy, ‘for the longest time’ because she felt so much ‘shame.’ 

Her extremely public divorce: Brooke split from her tennis player husband Andre Agassi after she discovered he had a secret crystal meth addiction 

Brooke faced another blow to her personal life when she went through a very public divorce from tennis player Andre Agassi in 1999, after only two years of marriage.

In her 2014 memoir, the star opened up about what led to their split, and she claimed that it came after he revealed that he had secretly ‘been addicted to crystal meth’ during the ‘first part of their relationship.’

‘I was so unbelievably clueless. To this day, I think to myself, “My God, Brooke. All you’ve seen in your life and you couldn’t pick this up?”‘ she wrote.

‘But if you watch these athletes play, they play five, six, seven hours at the highest level and they keep going and going and the regimen surrounding them is so intense that my justification was, I guess you need to blow off steam when you can.’

Brooke added that despite her heartbreak, looking back, she felt the relationship was ‘necessary.’ 

‘He gave me my first taste of freedom from my mom. He swept me away,’ she added.

‘You’d say something and it would happen. There would be a plane or if I said, “I can’t believe I have termites,” within 24 hours, the house would be tented.

‘He is a devoted person, sweet and good but he had this demon, this affliction. But the other side, and what makes this so hard, is the way he welcomed me and my mother and anybody I loved. He is a really good human being.’ 

Her postpartum depression battle: Brooke struggled after becoming a mom and took antidepressants, but was slammed after she spoke out about it

Brooke went on to wed TV writer Chris in 2001, and they welcomed two daughters together, Rowan in 2003 and Grier in 2006.

But in 2023, she revealed that she suffered from postpartum depression after becoming a mom.

Speaking on the WTF podcast, she said, ‘I was exhausted. I had gone through IVF seven times.

‘I lost so much blood when I gave birth to her and herniated my uterus. It was just everything that could have gone wrong. 

‘I thought I was going to die. They were going to give me a hysterectomy. There was so much trauma. And then I get home and I don’t know what to do with a baby.

‘I’m depleted and I’m completely biochemically imbalanced, and no-one knows it, and they just say “stop breastfeeding or stop doing this.”‘ 

She recalled feeling ‘helpless and scared,’ and explained that when she consulted her doctor, she was told, ‘Oh it’s just the baby blues.’

She added that she ultimately started taking ‘medication’ which led to her ‘feeling better.’

She previously admitted that it got so bad that she contemplated ending her life. 

In her 2005 book, Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression, she revealed that she considered jumping out of the window of her fourth-floor apartment.

‘I really didn’t want to live anymore,’ she wrote. ‘I finally had a healthy beautiful baby girl and I couldn’t look at her. 

‘I couldn’t hold her and I couldn’t sing to her and I couldn’t smile at her… All I wanted to do was disappear and die.’ 

She recalled thinking, ‘I should not exist. The baby would be better off without me. Life was never going to get better – so I better just go.’ 

After Brooke spoke about taking antidepressants in 2005, she was slammed by actor Tom Cruise.

The scientologist went on a bizarre rant about the drugs on the Today show, and cattily quipped about Brooke: ‘Where has her career gone?’

She shot back, saying he should ‘stick to fighting aliens’ – a reference to the belief among Scientologists that space alien parasites live inside all of us and must be destroyed. 

He later apologized in person to Brooke for the incident, which she called ‘heartfelt.’ 

Fearing for her life: Brooke was left feeling ‘violated and terrified’ after she claimed a man stalked and harassed her for over a decade

In 2016, Brooke became entangled in a legal battle with a man named John Rinaldi, after she claimed he had stalked and harassed her since at least 2003.

She fought back tears as she testified in court about how his actions had left her fearing for the safety of herself and her family.

She claimed that John had come to her home with stuffed animals and teddy bears for her daughters, then 13 and 10.

‘It made me feel so violated and terrified,’ said the actress.

She also alleged that he had sent her concerning letters and messages online, and described him as ‘disturbing and creepy’ on the stand. 

‘I can’t live like this any longer,’ the emotional star added. 

In addition, Brooke claimed that John had befriended her mother before her death, stating, ‘She was a woman with dementia and alcoholism.

‘She gathered people. If you were more broken down, if you were homeless, if you were, whatever, she brought you into the fray. She wanted to be a savior for everyone.’

He was found guilty of stalking and harassment, and sentenced to 60 days in jail.

Her terrifying health woes: Brooke had to undergo multiple surgeries after a gym accident and had a seizure that saw her ‘frothing at the mouth’

Brooke has had her fair share of health scares over the years. Back in 2021, she revealed she was in the hospital after she broke her femur in an accident at the gym.

She said on Instagram that she had fallen off a balance board and landed on her upper leg.

‘It felt like it was all in slow motion. And then I just started screaming. Sounds came out that I’ve never heard before,’ she told People of the incident. 

‘I kept saying, “I can feel my toes,” because I was so afraid I was paralyzed.’ 

She had to undergo surgery to get two metal rods inserted to stabilize the break. She then had to go under the knife a second time when a broken portion of her femur popped out.

However, that wasn’t the end of Brooke’s battle. She spent two-and-a-half weeks in the hospital only to return home and develop a very serious staph infection. 

The infection was so bad she had to return to the hospital for emergency surgery on the IV site where she had three blood transfusions during earlier surgeries.  

‘I think it’s almost been the biggest blessing to date because I realize what a fighter I am,’ she said on Good Morning America after the ordeal. 

She faced another health battle in September 2023, when she had a terrifying seizure saw her ‘frothing at the mouth.’

She explained to Glamour afterwards that she had collapsed ‘headfirst into the wall’ and started having a grand mal seizure outside the restaurant L’Artusi in New York. 

She said the seizure occurred because she was drinking too much water and was low in sodium. 

Actor Bradley Cooper rushed to her aid and held her hand in the ambulance as she was taken into intensive care.

‘Everything starts to go black. Then my hands drop to my side and I go headfirst into the wall. I start having a grand mal seizure,’ she said.

‘It means frothing at the mouth, totally blue, trying to swallow my tongue. The next thing I remember, I’m being loaded into an ambulance. 

‘I have oxygen on. And Bradley f***ing Cooper is sitting next to me holding my hand.’

Brooke said Bradley was called after the waiter at the restaurant was unable to get through to her husband, Chris. 

An assistant knew Bradley was nearby and the Hollywood actor headed straight to L’Artusi. 

Her daughter’s devastating diagnosis: Brooke’s child was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was 14, which left her feeling ‘helpless’

Brooke’s daughter Rowan faced her own life-threatening incident in 2018 due to complications from undiagnosed Type 1 diabetes. 

Rowan told People in September that her health took a frightening turn when she was a freshman in high school. 

‘I lost a lot of weight, really rapidly,’ she recalled. ‘But I was eating two meals [for] each meal. 

‘I was consuming so much food and I was just losing weight even faster the more I would eat.’

‘Another thing is you’re constantly peeing. And then my eyesight started to go and then I got a really bad toe infection. 

Rowan was diagnosed later that year and has been navigating life with Type 1 diabetes ever since. 

She’s taken to Instagram to share her journey, frequently posting photos that highlight her Dexcom patch as a way to bring visibility and understanding to the condition. 

Brooke expressed how ‘helpless’ she initially felt, but said she admired Rowan’s quick maturity and competence as she took control of her diabetes at just 14, managing her insulin shots independently and growing up rapidly in the process.

‘It was an adjustment,’ Brooke told the outlet. 

Rowan explained at the time that managing her diabetes is a constant, ’24/7 job,’ adding, ‘I’m never off duty.’