Brooke Shields explains why her parenting style is ‘lenient’ after not ‘losing her virginity until age 22’

Brooke Shields has described her 'lenient' parenting style after 'not losing her virginity until she was 22'.

The 60-year-old veteran Hollywood star has lived in the public eye ever since she was a child, first landing a career in the limelight at just 11 months old as a child model.

The New York actor then shot to superstardom at the age of 12 as a child actor, controversially playing the part of a young prostitute in Louis Malle's 1978 film, Pretty Baby, which featured a scene of her kissing her then 27-year-old co-star, Keith Carradine.

Yet despite her heightened and inappropriate sexualisation, Shields says she didn't lose her virginity until after her 22nd birthday.

Now a mom-of-two, The Blue Lagoon star has opened up about her bond with her two daughters, Roman, 22, and Grier, 19, during an episode of Today with Jenna and Friends.

The star has been frank about her own relationship history (Daniel Knighton/Getty Images)

Speaking to host Jenna Bush Hager, Shields revealed that she welcomes frank conversations with her kids when it comes to boyfriends and considers herself the 'lenient' parent compared to her husband, Chris Henchy.

"Holiday plans have sort of all been overtaken by my daughters' friends. So they're all coming to our house," Shields said on Friday's episode. "And what's been interesting this time is that there's boyfriend situations, and there's only so many beds. And it's a discussion.

"For some reason, because they all want to be there, there's something that just makes me feel like, 'Well, at least they all want to be together'."

"If they can be respectful and certain things can be where they're supposed to be," she added. While the mom said she's 'usually the tougher one' compared to Henchy, with whom she tied the knot in 2001, she noted how her parenting style has changed over the years as her daughters have grown up.

Brooke says she has a more 'relaxed' parenting style than her husband (Sonia Moskowitz/Getty Images)

"The fathers really look at their baby girls as perpetually baby girls. I've had to say, 'Come on, let's pick our battles here.' He's like, 'You have to have that conversation. I'm not having that conversation'," Shields said.

However, the former model admitted it feels 'weird' being so relaxed, especially considering her dating experiences when she was a 20-something.

"I just cannot believe that I'm the person who's more lenient when I didn't even lose my virginity until I was 22. I was in a locked box," Shields added.

The star said she was raised under 'strict' rules of her 'Catholic' household, stating: "I had the antithesis of the wild existence."

Shields has been open about losing her virginity to actor Dean Cain, who'd starred in 1993's Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, when she was 22, while the pair attended Princeton University.

Shields was raised in a 'strict' household as a child (John Nacion/Variety via Getty Images)

In her 2023 documentary Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields, she spoke further of the encounter, saying that after they'd had sex, she'd 'immediately ran out of the room, ran down the hall butt naked, just running'.

She wrote in her 1985 memoir, On Your Own, that she was a virgin at 20 and in a 2022 episode of her podcast, Now What? With Brooke Shields, she said she considers it a 'bit of a mistake' for having opened up, 'because it never left me alone.'

It caused her to be dubbed 'the most famous virgin in the world'.