World's Beautiful Women : Collection

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.

Early Life

Shields was born in New York City[3] into a well-known American society family with links to Italian and French nobility. Her grandmother was the Italian princess Donna Marina Torlonia. Her father, Frank Shields, was a businessman, and her mother, Teri Shields, managed her career. During her early years, Shields lived at 73 W. 59th St. in Manhattan.[citation needed]
When Brooke was only five-days-old, her mother decided she was going to have a show business career. According to her mother, "....She was the most beautiful child," and she was going to help her with her career. At eight-years-old, Brooke Shields posed nude; and, at age 10, she was paid $45 to appear in, Playboy.
Shields adopted her middle name, "Camille," for her Confirmation at age 10. Shields' parents divorced when she was a child. She has three half-sisters and two step-siblings. She attended the all-girl Lenox School and graduated from the Dwight-Englewood School in Englewood, New Jersey, in 1983. Into the mid-1980s, Shields was a resident of Haworth, New Jersey.
At age 12, Shields played a 12-year-old child prostitute. At age 16, she had already worked for 16 years and had made more money than the President of the United States. 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."

Modeling Career

Shields began her career as a model in 1966, at the age of 11 months. 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 early 1980 (at age 14), Shields was the youngest fashion model ever to appear on the cover of the top fashion publication Vogue magazine. 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, Brooke Shields, her mother, photographer Gary 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 world, because of her dual career as a provocative fashion model and controversial 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 naked picture of 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.

Film Career

Shields' first major film role was her 1978 appearance in Louis Malle's Pretty Baby, a movie in which she played a child who lived in a brothel (and in which there were numerous nude scenes). Because she was only 12 when the film was released, and possibly 11 when it was filmed, questions were raised about child pornography. This was followed by a slightly less controversial and less notable film, Wanda Nevada (1979).

Brooke Shields at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival.
After two decades of movies, her best known films are still arguably The Blue Lagoon (1980), which included a number of 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 a X rating. However, the film was re-edited to earn a 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 lesbian Lily in The Misadventures of Margaret.
On January 22, 2001, at 9 PM EST, Lifetime (TV network) aired the film What Makes a Family, starring Brooke Shields and Cherry Jones in a true-to-life story of two married lesbian mothers and a baby versus the adoption laws of Florida.

Personal Life

In the June 2009 issue of Health magazine, Shields announced she lost her virginity at age 22. She said she would have had sex earlier if she had had a better image of her body.
In the mid 1980s while at Princeton, Shields dated classmate Dean Cain. Shields has also been linked to John F. Kennedy Jr, actor Liam Neeson and singer George Michael. She was also a favorite date of Prince Naruhito of Japan. After a romantic interlude with John Travolta, the 16 year-old Brooke Shields dated 18 year-old Mohammed, son of the arm-dealer billionaire Adnan Khashoggi, in Cannes where they first met. At 18, Brooke Shields met Dodi Fayed and they became friends. Brooke was 24 years old when she spent the evening with Dodi Fayed in Paris to celebrate his 33rd birthday.[38]
By the 1990s, Brooke Shields would be exhibiting her physique as an extension of her womanhood, promoting physical fitness as an extension of femininity, demonstrating that femininity and athletics are consistent rather than incongruous. Although she was not the only one, Shields had what was required to promote woman athletics into the American mainstream: she was very feminine as a celebrity and as a model she really liked to dress up.
Shields has been married twice. From April 19, 1997 to April 9, 1999, Shields was married to professional tennis player Andre Agassi; the couple had been together since 1993.[40] On April 4, 2001, she married television writer Chris Henchy. The couple have two daughters: Rowan Frances (b. May 15, 2003) and Grier Hammond (b. April 18, 2006).

Postpartum Depression

In the spring of 2005, Shields spoke to magazines (such as Guideposts) and appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show to publicize her battle with postpartum depression, an experience that included depression, thoughts of suicide, an inability to respond to her baby's needs and delayed maternal bonding. The illness may have been triggered by a traumatic childbirth, the death of her father three weeks earlier, stress from in vitro fertilization, a miscarriage and a family history of depression, as well as the hormones and life changes which were brought on by childbirth. Her book, Down Came the Rain, discusses her experience,[41] contributing to a greater public awareness of postpartum depression.[42]
In May 2005, Tom Cruise, a Scientologist whose beliefs frown upon psychiatry, condemned Shields, both personally and professionally, particularly for both using and speaking in favor of the antidepressant drug Paxil. As Cruise said, "Here is a woman and I care about Brooke Shields, because I think she is an incredibly talented woman, you look at [and think], where has her career gone?" Shields responded that Cruise's statements about anti-depressants were "irresponsible" and "dangerous." She said that he should "stick to fighting aliens" (a reference to Cruise's starring role in War of the Worlds as well as some of the more exotic aspects of Scientology doctrine and teachings), "and let mothers decide the best way to treat postpartum depression." The actress responded to a further attack by Cruise in an essay "War of Words" published in The New York Times on July 1, 2005, in which she made an individual case for the medication and said, "In a strange way, it was comforting to me when my obstetrician told me that my feelings of extreme despair and my suicidal thoughts were directly tied to a biochemical shift in my body. Once we admit that postpartum is a serious medical condition, then the treatment becomes more available and socially acceptable. With a doctor's care, I have since tapered off the medication but, without it, I wouldn't have become the loving parent I am today."[43] On August 31, 2006, according to USAToday.com,[44] Cruise privately apologized to Shields for the incident and Shields accepted and said that it was "heartfelt." Three months later, she and her husband attended the wedding of Cruise and Katie Holmes, in November, 2006.
Shields 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.