Brooke Shields

Brooke Christa Camille Shields (born May 31, 1965) is an American actress, author and model. Some of her better-known movies include Pretty Baby and The Blue Lagoon as well as TV shows such as Suddenly Susan, That 70's Show, and Lipstick Jungle.

She was married from April 19, 1997 to April 9, 1999 to professional tennis player, Andre Agassi. On April 4, 2001 she wed TV writer Chris Henchy. They have two daughters, Rowan Francis, born on May 15, 2003, and Grier Hammond, born April 18, 2006.

Education:

She attended Princeton University from 1983 to 1987, graduating with a degree in French literature.

Career:

Brooke Shields' career began when she still an infant, working as a model. Her provocative work in the movie "Pretty Baby", in which she played a child living in a brothel, and her later modeling of Calvin Klein jeans ("Nothing comes between me and my Calvins.") are perhaps her most recognized jobs. She has worked on several movies and television shows, including her sitcom "Suddenly Susan", which earned her a People's Choice Award. She has also starred in several on-stage productions.

only child of her parents' marriage

links

• http://www.brookeshields.com/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooke_Shields
• http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000222/bio
• http://lagenealogy.net/shieldsBrooke.aspx (prepared by M. W. Talbot, mtaht@aol.com)
• http://pages.prodigy.net/ptheroff/gotha/torlonia.html
• http://www.nndb.com/people/197/000023128/
• http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1178497/posts
• http://users.legacyfamilytree.com/USPresidents/grant_shields.htm
• http://blog.familytreemagazine.com/insider/2010/04/03/WDYTYARecapBr...
• http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=dowfam3&i...
• "The Lesbian ancestors of Prince Rainier of Monaco, Dr. Otto von Habsburg, Brooke Shields and the Marquis de Sade" by William Addams Reitwiesner, an extensive article on the Gattilusio and their descendants. link

  ---

  
  

Brooke Christa Shields is an American actress, model and former child star. Initially a child model, she gained critical acclaim at age 12 for her leading role in Louis Malle's film Pretty Baby (1978), in which she played a child prostitute in New Orleans at the turn of the 20th century. The role garnered Shields widespread notoriety, and she continued to model into her late teenage years and starred in several dramas in the 1980s, including The Blue Lagoon (1980), and Franco Zeffirelli's Endless Love (1981).

In 1983, Shields suspended her career as a model to attend Princeton University, where she graduated with a bachelor's degree in Romance Languages. In the 1990s, Shields returned to acting, appearing in minor roles in films, and starred in the titular role of the sitcom Suddenly Susan, which ran for four seasons between 1996 and 2000. Most recently, Shields has made appearances in other television shows, including That '70s Show and Lipstick Jungle, also starring in the animation film Under Wraps, alongside Matthew Lillard and Drake Bell. She also worked alongside Bell again in the animated films Adventure Planet and A Monsterous Holiday.

Shields was born in Manhattan, the daughter of Teri (née Schmon; 1933–2012) and Frank Shields (1941–2003), a businessman. Through her father's side, she has Italian, French, Irish, and English roots, along with high social position and relations to nobility. According to research by William Addams Reitwiesner published in 1995, Brooke Shields has ancestral links with a number of noble families from Italy, in particular from Genoa and Rome. These are namely (in chronological order of descent from 1355 to 1965) the Gattilusi-Palaiologos-Savoy; Grimaldi; Imperiali; Carafa; Doria; Doria-Pamphili-Landi; Chigi-Albani; and Torlonia dynasties.[6] Her paternal grandmother was the Italian princess Donna Marina Torlonia (Donna Marina was the daughter of an Italian nobleman and an American socialite). Shields' mother was of German, English, Scots-Irish, and Welsh descent. Shields was raised in the Roman Catholic faith.

When Teri announced that she was pregnant, Frank's family paid her a sum to terminate the pregnancy. Teri took the money, but violated the agreement and gave birth to their daughter who they named Brooke.Frank married Teri, but they were divorced when Brooke was five months old. She has two stepbrothers and three half-sisters.

When Shields was only five-days-old, her mother openly stated she wanted her to be active in show business: "She's the most beautiful child and I'm going to help her with her career." Growing up, Shields took piano, ballet and riding lessons.

For her confirmation in the Roman Catholic Church at age 10, she took the name "Camille". While attending high school, she resided in Haworth, New Jersey. Shields has stated that her very first encounter with the paparazzi was in the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria New York at the age of 12, stating that she "stood like a statue wondering why they were all hired to photograph me", and that she "debuted at the Waldorf".

Shields attended the New Lincoln School until eighth grade. She graduated from The Dwight-Englewood School in Englewood, New Jersey, in 1983. She moved to a dorm at Princeton University to pursue her bachelor's degree in French literature, where she graduated in 1987.

At Princeton, she spoke openly about her sexuality and virginity. Shields was a member of the Princeton Triangle Club and the Cap and Gown Club. Her autobiography, On Your Own, was published in 1985. Her 1987 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."

Shortly after her college graduation, her four-year transcript was published in the July 1987 edition of Life Magazine. Based on that transcript, The New York Times published a light-hearted op-ed piece intended to tweak the claim that Princeton produced superior, well-rounded graduates. Noting that Shields "got all A's and B's, and obviously paid attention to her school work," it claimed "she got cheated" because Princeton did not require her to take any classical studies, medieval, modern or American history, nor any course in mathematics, philosophy, economics, political science, world literature or science with laboratory experience. "[I]f that adds up to a liberal arts education from a place like Princeton, there is no longer any danger that our society will ever suffer from elitism in any form," concluded the piece.

Shields began her career as a model in 1966, when she was 11 months old. Her first job was for Ivory Soap, shot by Francesco Scavullo. She continued as a successful child model with model agent Eileen Ford, who, in her Lifetime Network biography, stated that she started her children's division just for Shields. In 1978, when she was 12-years-old, Shields played a child prostitute in the controversial film Pretty Baby. Eileen Ford, founder of the Ford Modeling Agency, said of Brooke Shields: "She is a professional child and unique. She looks like an adult and thinks like one."

In 1980, the 14-year-old Shields was the youngest fashion model ever to appear on the cover of Vogue. Later that same year, Shields appeared in controversial print and TV ads for Calvin Klein jeans. The TV ad included her saying the famous tagline, "You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing." Brooke Shields ads would help catapult Klein's career to super-designer status.

From 1981 to 1983, Shields, her mother, photographer Garry Gross, Playboy Press and the New York City Courts were involved in litigation over the rights to some photographs her mother had signed away to the photographer (when dealing with models who are also minors, a parent or legal guardian must sign such a release form while other agreements are subject to negotiation) which were originally intended to appear in a book titled Sugar and Spice to be published by Playboy Press. The courts ruled in favor of the photographer, but due to a strange twist in New York law, it would have been otherwise had Brooke Shields been considered a child "performer" rather than a model.

By the age of 16, Shields had become one of the most recognizable faces in the United States, because of her dual career as a provocative fashion model and child actress. Time magazine reported in its February 9, 1981 cover story that her day rate as a model was $10,000. In 1983, Shields appeared on the cover of the September issue of Paris Vogue, the October and November issues of American Vogue and the December edition of Italian Vogue. During that period Shields became a regular at New York City's nightclub Studio 54. In 2009, a picture of a naked Brooke Shields taken when she was 10 and included in a work by Richard Prince, Spiritual America, created a row. It was removed from an exhibition at the Tate Modern after a warning from the police.

Shields' first major film role was as a lead actress in Louis Malle's Pretty Baby (1978), a movie in which she played a child named Violet who lived in a brothel (in which there were numerous nude scenes). As she was only 12-years-old when the film was released, controversy regarding child pornography arose. This was followed by a slightly less controversial and less notable film, Wanda Nevada (1979).

After two decades of movies, her best known films are still arguably The Blue Lagoon (1980), which included nude scenes between teenage lovers on a tropical island (Shields later testified before a U.S. Congressional inquiry that older body doubles were used in some of them), and Endless Love (1981). The MPAA initially rated Endless Love with an X rating. The film was re-edited to earn an R rating. She won the People's Choice Award in the category of Favorite Young Performer in four consecutive years from 1981 to 1984. In 1998, she played a lesbian, Lily, in The Misadventures of Margaret. In 2001, Lifetime aired the film What Makes a Family, starring Shields and Cherry Jones in a true story of a lesbian couple who fought the adoption laws of Florida.

Shields has appeared in a number of television shows. In 1980, she was the youngest guest star to ever appear on The Muppet Show, in which she and the Muppets put on their own version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. She was also the youngest person to host ABC's Fridays, a Saturday Night Live-like sketch comedy show, in 1981. In one episode of the popular comedy sitcom Friends, Shields played Joey's stalker. This role led directly to her being cast in the NBC sitcom Suddenly Susan, in which she starred from 1996 until 2000, and which earned a People's Choice Award in the category of Favorite Female Performer in a New Television Series for her, in 1997, and two Golden Globe nominations.

In the early 1980s, she starred in the USPHS PSA sponsored by the American Lung Association as an initiative that VIPs should become examples and advocates of non-smoking. In the mid-1980s, Brooke began her support of the USO by touring with Bob Hope.

In the late 2000s, Shields guest-starred on shows like FX's Nip/Tuck and CBS' Two and a Half Men. In 2005, Shields appeared in a season-two episode of HBO's Entourage, entitled "Blue Balls Lagoon." In 2007, she made a guest appearance on Disney's Hannah Montana, playing Susan Stewart, Miley and Jackson's mother, who died in 2004. In 2008, she returned in the primetime drama Lipstick Jungle. The series ended a year later.

In 2010 and 2012, she made guest appearances on The Middle as the mother of a brood of terror-inducing children and the nemesis of Frankie Heck (played by Patricia Heaton). She also appeared as a featured celebrity in NBC's genealogy documentary reality series, Who Do You Think You Are?, where it was revealed that, through her father's ancestry, she is the distant cousin (many generations removed) of King Louis XIV of France, and thus a descendant of both Saint Louis and Henry IV of France.

Shields has appeared in several Broadway theater productions, including the musicals Grease (1994 revival) as Betty Rizzo, the 1998 revival of Cabaret (in 2001), the 2003 revival of Wonderful Town (in 2004–2005) and Chicago.[1] She also performed in Chicago in London's West End. She took over the role of Morticia Addams in the Broadway musical The Addams Family on June 28, 2011.

In the June 2009 issue of Health magazine, Shields related that she lost her virginity at age 22 to actor Dean Cain while they were dating at Princeton. She said it would have occurred earlier had she had a better self-image.

In the 1990s, Shields promoted physical fitness as an extension of femininity, maintaining that femininity and athletics are compatible. Although she was not the only woman doing so, Shields had what was required to promote women's athletics.

Shields is also a well-known vegan and an animal rights activist. However, despite coming out against the fur industry in 1989, Shields later went on to create her own mink fur coat at Kopenhagen Fur. She came under the scrutiny of animal rights organizations such as PETA for this visit, which prompted media attention.

Shields has been married twice. From 1997 to 1999, she was married to professional tennis player Andre Agassi; the couple had been together since 1993. Following her divorce from Agassi, she married television writer Chris Henchy in 2001, after they had met in 1999 through mutual friends. The couple have two daughters and reside in Manhattan, New York City. She is a spokeswoman for Tupperware's Chain of Confidence SMART Girls campaign, a program that teaches girls to nurture their mental and physical well-being.