Everyone kind of suspects it, but little is said about it: Counter services also work in Hollywood. And it’s been that way since time immemorial. Celebrities (mostly female) carry heavy burdens with them in life. “I thought I wouldn’t survive,” Brooke Shields (57), the star of the films The Girl and the Blue Lagoon, who experienced sexual harassment thirty years ago, recalls her experience. But only now she decided to talk about it.
A drink to follow
She is said to have broken the barrier of silence to give courage to ladies over forty who are troubled by a similar experience. “I want to advocate for women to be able to tell the truth at any age and thus process the traumas they carry with them from their youth,” explains the actress in an interview with People magazine. “So they can be proud of what they’ve accomplished and enjoy the next chapter of their lives without blaming themselves.” Brooke Shieds was sexually assaulted in her twenties.
She admits she was naive. At the time, she was fresh out of school, unable to find a job and desperate to break into film. And so she didn’t see, she didn’t hear. “I got a call from a Hollywood executive who I won’t name. He invited me to dinner,” he says. “He ordered a taxi after the meal. That we will have a drink at his hotel. But as soon as the door to the room was closed, he pounced on me.” What happened next, I probably don’t need to specify. Brooke admits she didn’t fight back. She was so scared that she just froze and waited for it to be over…
Only my husband helped
“In such situations, there are only two options – either you fight or you run,” adds Shields. “Fighting was out of the question. He was a truly high-profile filmmaker. So I just pretended I wasn’t there. I left my own body, I pushed it out. As if I had never been there.” Subsequently, she constantly replayed the whole situation. Why didn’t they just have a drink with dinner? Why did she get into that cab with him? It was too late to question his conscience. And although the whole thing bothered her a lot, she had no one to confide in. No one believed her. In the following years, Brooks had great problems with the perception of her own sexuality.
“It’s hard to describe, but I felt like I had no body.” She closed in on herself, followed by a long cycle of self-recrimination. Everything broke when she married director Chris Henchy (58), with whom she has two adult daughters. She is also helped by her own online community platform called Beginning Is Now (Editor’s note), where she shares experiences with women who are troubled by an unresolved past. Thanks to the fact that she found out how many people have a similar experience, she decided to go on the market with her skin after more than thirty years. “It makes me feel great now. Like a bull that can’t be defeated,” laughs the actress, who is currently being made into a biographical documentary. It should premiere at the beginning of April.
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