There Was a Little Girl: The Real Story of My Mother and Me (22 page)

I was so happy to have Diana there. Press junkets are pure torture. You go to a hotel and whole floors are invaded and occupied by different press outlets. The actors and director trade off from room to room and do back-to-back interviews of about five to seven minutes each. You could do forty-two interviews before lunch. It’s mind-numbing because of the repetition. I kept getting questions like “What was it like living on an island?” and “Were you and Chris Atkins really in love?” and “Did you do your own nudity?”

I could answer these questions in my sleep. In fact, Mom, Diana, and I had a running joke about how a journalist would not even have to ask one question and I could give them a complete interview. After surviving
Pretty Baby
’s press tour, I was a pro on nudity and romance and the rigor of filmmaking.

It got to the point that I started answering the questions before the
journalist even finished the question. Finally my mom, who would watch my interviews, took me aside and reminded me to allow the interviewer to get the question out. We had a big laugh about that. On our lunch break in the hotel room, I posed as a journalist and Diana pretended to be me answering the questions. We thought it was hysterical. Chris played along, and he and Randal did their own version. We made an otherwise tedious necessity fun and silly.

We kept things interesting in other ways. Randal would quietly sing the words to the Robbie Dupree song “Steal Away” under his breath as we passed in the hallways on the way to the next “firing squad,” as I nicknamed the press. We were all so bored and tired and all wished we could just run out the door and escape. Having the spurts of laughter and my stepsister and mother doing whatever they could to keep me laughing made it all more enjoyable and helped me maintain perspective. I was also excited because Mom promised that once I had finished my obligations, I could go shopping. Mom would let me loose in the store and Diana and I would spend all my per diem. The combination of this, good restaurants, and hanging out wearing our hotel robes was enough to sustain me.

All I kept thinking during these press days was that the journalists were all going to slaughter me in this movie. It just seemed to me that after
Pretty Baby
, it was decided that I was worthy of attack. Mom would not be able to shield me as entirely as she had from the negativity of
Pretty Baby
, but at least that had been a European director and an incredible cast.

This was a cast of two, and I carried most of the burden of ensuring its success. I suppose I was more equipped to handle it by then, but I was slightly apprehensive. I knew enough by this point to be concerned but realized there was nothing I could do.

The movie made a huge splash and was a box-office hit, ultimately the ninth-highest-grossing film of 1980. The studio was over the moon, and I was once again a commodity they coveted. But strangely,
I never paid much attention to how my movies did. In my mind, they were done, and I was thinking about my next job. If I had enjoyed making the movie, then it was a success in my eyes.

I’m also glad that I was unaware of the true power of ticket sales. I didn’t pore over the reviews this time, either, and because I sort of couldn’t be bothered, I remained somewhat protected from any negativity. There were mixed reviews for
The Blue Lagoon
, and Mom did not hide them from me as actively as she had with
Pretty Baby
. I also didn’t really ask to read them. I simply wanted to move on. I had done the movie and it was over. A year had passed. I was attending a new school and had basically moved past the experience. Plus, I did not want to hear bad critiques; I knew they would attack me and I knew my feelings would get hurt. For whatever reason, I subconsciously knew that it was probably healthier for me to be somewhat separated from the reviews.

Thinking about it now, though, I am a bit conflicted about the fact that I did not read reviews. Perhaps if I had read the reviews, I may have chosen to steer my career differently. Perhaps I could have made better choices or might have given it all up entirely. I will never know.

Once the press junket was over and we were back in New York for good, Mom and I fell into our familiar pattern. We kept busy: I studied, she drank, we went to the movies, she drank, I navigated her moods, and she drank.

I had hoped that a fresh start and a successful film would make everything easier. But the more in demand I became, the more complicated everything got. My mother reacted to the press by defending herself to journalists like Barbara Walters or by choosing to give random interviews to the press. Normally you don’t see the talent’s manager on TV, but she was my mom and the world ate it up. She wanted to prove she was still protecting me and that she was guiding my career in the best way possible. She loved that she was known as Brooke Shields’s mother. It gave her a deep and personal validation.
We were making it in the world. I think a part of Mom loved all of the attention because it was shared with me but was sadly often not articulate enough to get her point across the way she hoped.

She was trying to keep us talked-about and to make sure I was adored. She wanted to secure enough money to ensure us a substantial and comfortable future—something she never had as a kid. Mom wanted to make the best lives she could for us. Whatever choices my mother made, positive or negative, they were what they were. She believed she was acting in my best interest always. And the cathexis I experienced rendered me immobile. It was so acute that I never questioned her judgment. Mom and I were symbiotically enmeshed and it would be years before I was able to see us as separate people.

My codependence was easily perpetuated because it felt familiar and I believed my mother knew the right way about everything. I was never given the space or the opportunity to make my own choices. I simply followed what she said and tried not to rock the boat. My priority was keeping my mother alive and that meant never leaving her. I believe I was primarily trying to protect my mother from herself and keep her from her own demise. It was an enormous distraction. I didn’t have the time to focus on reviews, the trajectory of my career, boyfriends, or much else. Dating seemed almost silly. Plus, boys rarely asked me out because I was famous, and even though I was mature for my age, I was hardly experienced. I really only concerned myself with my studies and with my mother’s well-being. I believed my mother held the key to my security in the world and my ticket to the future.

The main problem, though—aside from alcohol—was that Mom had no system of operations. She had no long-term plan except to gain financial security and keep my name out there. Her unconventional and often maddening approach to managing me solidified her lack of popularity within the entertainment business. She did not, however, seem to care or feel the need to adjust or justify her
behavior. She also showed no signs of intending to ever ask for professional help. According to her, the system worked, and I lovingly agreed.

The Blue Lagoon
remains the most successful movie I have ever made and the film with which I am the most identified. I’m serious when I say that a week rarely goes by in which
somebody
doesn’t mention this movie to me. Generations have passed, and now those who watched the movie as teenagers are playing it for their children. For many it was their introduction to sex. Today, sex is introduced in a much more provocative and graphic way. Comparatively,
The Blue Lagoon
is mild. I still probably won’t let my girls watch it. Too weird.

Chapter Nine

The Brooke Doll

S
oon after I shot
The Blue Lagoon
, Mom bought a huge Tudor-style house in Englewood, New Jersey, right over the George Washington Bridge. The week before we moved into the house it was broken into and robbed. We suspected the interest in the stolen items stemmed from my being a recognizable name and the attention our move had gotten within the town. But
The Blue Lagoon
had not even been released yet and I was hardly famous in comparison to what I would soon become. Whatever the reason, a bunch of kids, conveniently led by the daughter of a local policeman, broke into the huge house and were caught walking out with rugs and other items.

The next day, Mom put the house back on the market, and since school had already started, we had little time to look for and move into a new home. I began an uncommon reverse commute from our New York City apartment to my new high school campus. Mom still had our black Jeep Renegade, and I loved the ride in the mornings, going against commuter traffic as the sun was rising.

Mom kept up the search and eventually found another big Tudor-style home in a town called Haworth.

When we permanently left the apartment on Seventy-Third Street
after almost fifteen years of living there, I wasn’t sure whether I felt excited or apprehensive. It was probably a combination of both. I did love new starts and experiencing new lifestyles. But in the past, I had always been able to return to Manhattan. The drive to Haworth was only about forty-five minutes from the city, but it might as well have been a different country. I was not a Jersey girl. I was a native New Yorker through and through, and I felt my mom was the same. I knew that Mom always maintained her bond with New Jersey, but Newark was a far cry from the suburban town of Haworth and could not have been expected to quell her melancholy for her “homeland.”

I began attending the Dwight-Englewood School in 1979. It was a shock to my system. Not only was I a new kid from Manhattan in a new high school in New Jersey, but I was also suddenly taking classes with kids who had actually seen some of my movies. This was really the first time I was around peers who were aware of my celebrity. They were old enough to see movies like
Tilt
or
Just You and Me, Kid
and were very conscious of my fame.

To their credit, they were never unkind. I am sure that the school somehow made them aware that they should treat me just like a regular kid. It was a bit disconcerting, I’m sure, having a celebrity in your ninth-grade math class, but the kids seemed to be respectful of my space. They did so almost to a fault, however, because I ended up feeling set apart and lonesome. They were not being standoffish as much as reserved and slightly intimidated. Most of these kids had gone to the same grade school together and had become a tight-knit group that would take time to penetrate. The transition for me was going to require some effort.

My first term was pretty miserable and I was overwhelmed. The workload was unlike anything I had ever experienced. I had never seen so much homework and I had zero experience in navigating such a tough class schedule. Just navigating the vast campus to get to my classes on my own created a challenge. My grades were not great,
I was living in isolated New Jersey, and I practically had no friends. I didn’t mind the lack of friends, quite honestly, because I was fraught, awkward, and uncomfortable, and I wanted to hide. I dreaded getting out of the car each morning. Whenever I got the chance, I’d cry to my mother from the pay phone outside the science building. Mom kept reassuring me that it would all get better and that I had to just stick to it. She guaranteed me that I would soon make friends. I just had to keep holding my head up high.

My mom and I were getting along fine, and although I was concerned about her drinking, I was more concerned about her driving while drunk. We did not drive a lot in New York City, so it had never really been an issue, but now we were in need of a car for everything, and that created a new set of potential problems. For now, however, I had little time to dwell on her as much because I had to focus on getting my high school experience under control. How could I become integrated into this new school? How could I make friends?

Mom decided that I should invite my class to some party to help break the ice. There used to be a restaurant/club called Wednesdays in midtown that turned into a roller-skating rink one night a week. The owners offered to throw me a roller-skating Halloween party. All I had to do was take some photos and be seen enjoying the club. Mom told the owner that my entire class must be invited.

I sent out invitations and was terrified nobody would come. But as I was taking pictures for a few photographers, I saw a group of kids I recognized walk through the door. Soon the whole class was there and we were all dressed in Halloween costumes, rolling around to the music. It was so much fun and it turned out to be a perfect icebreaker. I worried at first that maybe it felt like bribery and that I was buying the friendships. But it ended up being the social event that would show my peers that although I had lived an unusual life, I was, in fact, just a regular kid.

The best part about the whole thing was that the kids did not
expect me to keep having parties and inviting them. They saw it as a bit of a job for me because I had to take photos with people and do interviews, and they realized that the party was in a way more for them and was in no way me showing off. From that night on, kids started slowly including me more and inviting me to study together or have sleepovers. I began to make friends all across the board. My closest friends were Lisa, Missy, Diane, and Gigi. All five of us remain friends to this day.