Brooke Christa Camille Shields was born May 31, 1965 in New York City and is an American actress and former fashion model.


Career


Brooke Shields' career as a model began in the mid-1960s as an infant, and she continued as a successful child model throughout the 1970s. In early 1980 (at age 14), Brooke Shields was the youngest fashion model to ever appear on the cover of the top fashion publication Vogue magazine. Later that same year (at age 15), Brooke 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, Brooke 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.


Brooke Shields' 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 (and in which there were numerous nude scenes). 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 (1979).


After two decades of movies, her best-known films are still arguably The Blue Lagoon (1980) (which included more nude scenes, but Brooke Shields later testified before a U.S. Congressional inquiry that older body doubles were used in some of them), and Endless Love (1981). She won the People's Choice Award in the category of Favorite Young Performer in four consecutive years from 1981 to 1984.



Brooke 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."


In 1984, Brooke Shields was Michael Jackson's date to the Grammy Awards and also dated him for a brief period.


Brooke Shields has appeared in a number of television shows, the most successful being the NBC sitcom Suddenly Susan, 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.


Brooke Shields has appeared in many on-stage productions, mostly musical revivals, including Grease, Cabaret, Wonderful Town and Chicago on Broadway; she also performed in Chicago in London's West End.


Brooke Shields made a couple of guest appearances on That 70s Show. She played Mrs. Burkehart, Jackie's (Mila Kunis) mother who later got interested in Donna's (Laura Prepon) father (Don Stark). Brooke Shields left That 70s Show when her character left to let Donna's dad and Donna's mother (Tanya Roberts) be together.

Follow up:

Brooke Shields Personal Life


Born into an aristocratic family, her parents are the late Francis Alexander Shields and Maria Theresia Schmonn (divorced 1965). Her father remarried Diana Lippert, the former wife of Thomas Gore Auchincloss (half-brother of Gore Vidal and of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis). Brooke Shields has three half sisters: Marina Torlonia Shields (who married Thomas William Purcell), Olympia, and Christiana Shields. Also, she has two stepsiblings: Diana Luise Auchincloss and Thomas Gore Auchincloss Jr.


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 Infanta Beatriz of Spain (aunt of King Juan Carlos I of Spain). Their granddaughter Sibilla Weiller (b. 1968), Brooke Shield´s cousin, married Prince Guillaume of Luxembourg (b. 1963), the youngest brother of Henri, Grand Duke of Luxembourg, in 1994. Through her Italian grandmother, Brooke Shields is a descendant of Lucrezia Borgia, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, Honoré I of Monaco and Henry IV of France. Brooke 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."


When Brooke 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. Brooke Shields 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, born on May 15, 2003, and Grier Hammond, born on April 18, 2006.


Postpartum depression


In the spring of 2005, Brooke Shields spoke to magazines and appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show 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 bonding. The illness may have been triggered by a traumatic labor and delivery, 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 Brooke Shields for both using and speaking in favor of the anti-depressant drug Paxil. Tom 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?"

Brooke Shields responded that Cruise's statements about anti-depressants were

"irresponsible" and "dangerous."

She said he should

"stick to fighting aliens"

, (a reference to Cruise's starring role in War of the Worlds as well as (perhaps unknowingly) some of the more outlandish aspects of Scientology doctrine and teachings),

"and let mothers decide the best way to treat postpartum depression."

Brooke Shields responded to a further attack by Cruise in an essay published in The New York Times on July 1, 2005. in which she made a scientific and individual case for the medication.