First kiss at 11 – with a 29 year old

By Marlow Stern

In “Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields,” a two-part documentary premiering April 3 on Hulu, actress and activist Brooke Shields tells of her deeply disturbing modeling and acting career, which began when a family friend attempted to take nude photos of her to appearing nude at age 15 in the 1980 film The Blue Lagoon.

“The film and Brooke’s story aren’t just about Hollywood to me. It’s about the objectification of girls and women in general,” says director Lana Wilson (“Miss Americana”). “Brooke is a billboard for what it’s like to be treated as a beautiful thing, objectified by millions of people without even realizing it. The documentary asks: What psychological effects does this have on a person?”

At age 11, Shields played a child prostitute in Pretty Baby, a film by French filmmaker Louis Malle who died in 1978. In the film, it is presented on a tray and auctioned off to the highest bidder. In another scene, she kisses actor Keith Carradine, a grown man. She had never kissed anyone before.

Brooke Shields’ discomfort was not taken seriously

“It’s a moment I wanted to show and unpack, because even if little Brooke was fully aware of the role she was playing, and even if she realized the acting was just pretense, I can’t help but to think, ‘This is a real 11-year-old girl kissing a real 29-year-old man,'” says Wilson. “This is inescapably real. And the effects of that are real too. Eleven-year-old Brooke expressed her uneasiness about the moment during filming, but that uneasiness was not taken seriously by the director.”

This text is a translation of an article on rollingstone.con.

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