“I Had To Fight For Normalcy”: Brooke Shields On Life In The Spotlight

At 59, Brooke Shields is taking a heartfelt look back at her life and career. In her new memoir, Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old, the actress opens up about revelations in her 50s that made her reassess her journey, including the impact of her mother, Teri, managing her career in her early years.

Brooke shares a particularly poignant “what if” moment when she learned that legendary Hollywood agent Sam Cohn—who worked with icons like Meryl Streep and Paul Newman — wanted to represent her when she was young. “This was the first time I had heard anything about it!” she wrote, adding, “My God, I agonized. If I’d signed with him back then, it would have fundamentally changed the trajectory of my acting career.”

Brooke’s career skyrocketed in the late ’70s under her mother’s management, with roles in provocative films like Pretty Baby at just 12 years old and The Blue Lagoon at 15. But reflecting on that time, she wonders what might have been different with professional representation. “Maybe I wouldn’t have become someone they made a doll of or who had branded hair dryers,” she notes. “Perhaps I wouldn’t have had to go to Japan to do a Nescafé commercial in the mid-1990s just to keep our brownstone.”

Her relationship with her mother was complex, a fact she has openly discussed, including on The Drew Barrymore Show in 2023. “All I knew was, keep my mother alive, keep dancing and get stuff,” she told Drew. 

In her memoir, Brooke recalls a scene from her 2023 documentary, Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields, where her mother coaches her on swimming as a child. “She was never taught, but I followed her coaching as if she were Katie Ledecky. That was our relationship in a nutshell. To me, she was the arbiter of all things Brookie,” Brooke writes.

Despite her fame, Brooke reflects on her longing for rebellion during her youth, a side she feels she never fully explored. As she writes: “The truth is, I absolutely understand the urge to shave your head, smash a car window with an umbrella, and say f— you to all the craziness. The hounding is constant from the moment you leave your house, and that can really mess with a person. I had to fight for normalcy. My attitude has always been, I will not let them win.”