Featured Image Credit: Syndication/Columbia Pictures
Topics: Film and TV, Celebrity
Gregory Robinson
Brooke Shields has revealed the director of her controversial film The Blue Lagoon reached out to her after she claimed in her documentary that he wanted to exploit her ‘sexual awakening’.
In her new, ground-breaking documentary, Shields discusses her experience as being a sexualised child star in Hollywood.
The documentary, titled Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields, reflects on the actor's experience working on some of her earliest films including Pretty Baby which inspired the doc’s title.
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Another movie in Shields’ repertoire includes the highly controversial 1980 film The Blue Lagoon, directed by Randal Kleiser, which focuses on two shipwrecked cousins who fall in love and conceive a baby while on a tropical island.
Shields was only 14 years old when she starred in the film and it featured scenes of child nudity, with the young actor appearing with her hair covering her breasts for most of it.
Shields said that Randal, who also directed Grease, tried to market the film around her experiencing a 'sexual awakening' on screen just like her character.
In the documentary, Randal is quoted as telling a newspaper: “It’s real, she’s going from a child to a woman during the filming.”
Shields reflected on the film during the doc and said: “They wanted to sell my actual sexual awakening.
“The irony was, I wasn’t in touch with any of my own sexuality.”
During a new interview on The Drew Barrymore Show, the talk show host asked Shields if ‘any of the male directors’ she mentioned in the documentary have reached out to her since its release.
Although the directors of Pretty Baby and Endless Love, Louis Malle and Franco Zeffirelli respectively, have passed away, Randal has tried to contacted her.
“I saw his name on my phone, and I was like, ‘What do I do?’” she shared. “And I let it go to voicemail because I was like, ‘I want to see what the tone is.’”
Shields added: “He wants to chat. I don't know about what.”
The 57-year-old star said she has since decided to ignore his calls.
“I don't feel like bringing any of it back up again,” she said. “And it’s not about that, you know?”
Speaking generally about the male directors she worked with early in her career, Shields said it was about ‘these males needing me to be in a certain category to serve their story.’
“It never was about me, it was never protective of me. It was fun and loving at times, but I was just there,” she added. “I was a pawn, I was a piece, I was a commodity.”