Brooke Shields is complimenting a certain adult who “took such good care” of her when she was a child actor and being s*xualized.
On “The Drew Barrymore Show” on Tuesday, the star of “Suddenly Susan” said that she thought male filmmakers used her as a child.
It was about these males needing me to be in a certain category [of beauty] to serve their story. And it never was about me,
Shields said.
It was never protective of me. It was fun and loving at times, but it was ― I was just there. I was a pawn.
But Brooke Shields gave credit to one man in Hollywood who didn’t fit that description: her “Pretty Baby” co-star Keith Carradine.
Brooke Shields played a child s*x worker in the controversial 1978 movie. She was only 11 years old at the time. When he played Shields’ love interest, Carradine was in his late 20s. He is now 73 years old.
Brooke Shields told Barrymore that her first kiss was with Carradine in the movie “Pretty Baby.”
Keith Carradine took such good care of me,
Shields said.
She told Barrymore what Carradine had said to her before they filmed the scene where they kissed:
He looked at me and he said, ‘You know, this doesn’t count as a first kiss.
That was gracious and protective and caring on a level that I don’t even think I knew at the time,
Shields said, adding that up to that point she had “never kissed a boy before.”
In her Hulu documentary, also called “Pretty Baby,” which came out earlier this month, Brooke Shields talks more about how they shot the kissing scene. Shields says in the documentary that she was uncomfortable while filming the intimate scene and that the director of the movie, Louis Malle, didn’t care that she was uncomfortable. Shields says that she kept making a disgusted face during each take, which made Malle tell her to stop.
Eventually, Carradine asked for a break, pulled Shields aside, and told her it was all “pretend” and “make-believe,” which was exactly what she needed to hear to get through the scene.
Lana Wilson, the documentary’s director, said in an interview with Rolling Stone:
This is a moment I wanted to feature and unpack because, even if child Brooke was fully cognizant of the role she was playing, and even if she realized that acting was pretend, I can’t help but think: ‘This is an actual 11-year-old girl having to kiss an actual 29-year-old man.’
That inescapably is real,
Wilson went on.
And the impact of that is real, too. 11-year-old Brooke expressed discomfort during the filming of this moment, but that discomfort was not taken seriously by the director.
