Topics: Celebrity, Film and TV, Sex and Relationships, Brooke Shields
Watching your parent be romantic is pretty awkward most of the time, but it can't be easy when your mom is a celebrity actress and clips of her kissing and starring in love scenes are everywhere.
For Rowan and Grier Henchy, the daughters of iconic actress Brooke Shields, it's also made even worse when the clip most people are viewing is from a film in the late 1970s when Shields was just 11-years-old.
The film, Pretty Baby, focused on photographer Carradine - played by a then 29-year-old Keith Carradine -in 1917, who meets a prostitute in a New Orleans brothel, played by Susan Sarandon.
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The film then takes an odd and pretty gross twist as Carradine's character, named Bellocq, befriends her 12-year-old daughter Violet, played by Shields.
Bellocq and Violet have a romantic relationship and well, it's all pretty downhill from there as Violet gets sucked into working in the brothel.
Discussing watching their mom kiss on screen when she hadn't even become a teenager, Grier and Rowan are understandably grossed out.
Speaking to PEOPLE, 18-year-old Grier said: "I don’t like this movie. I’ve seen enough of it on TikTok. I would prefer not to watch my mom being sold as an 11-year-old prostitute. I’d rather watch the funny and happy ones."
She continued: "That’s weird. She had to kiss someone [over] twice her age."
21-year-old Rowan agreed as she added: "Your stage kiss does not count as a real kiss."
Shields has previously revealed that Carradine tried to put her at ease, and was obviously aware of how big an age gap there was and the weirdness that came with it.
In her 2023 documentary, also named Pretty Baby, Shields explained: "He told me it doesn’t count [as a first kiss] which was very sweet. He was probably struggling too."
The movie is understandably uncomfortable viewing and hasn't aged very well, which Shields adds would not likely be made now.
She said: "The conversations are so different now. It’s a weak argument to say to very aware women, ‘That’s the way it was then.’ It was a norm but that’s not an argument. Nothing I did then, you could get away with doing now."
Needless to say the movie with their pre-teen mom doesn't feature high on either of the girls' 'must watch' lists, as Rowan explained: "It’s more like it never really crossed my mind to say, ‘Movie night, let’s watch Pretty Baby.’
"I’m either watching Love Island or a new movie, like Minions or Despicable Me. It’s not like I’m purposefully avoiding watching my mother.
"I loved Mother of the Bride and Castle for Christmas."
