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Brooke Shields
Brooke Shields
Christa Brooke Camille Shields (born May 31, 1965) is
an American actress, born in New York City, New York,
USA. She achieved early fame as a child actress, and by
her teens was one of the most photographed and recognized
models in the world. She attended Princeton University
from 1983 to 1987, graduating with a degree in French
literature.
Shields' career started among much ballyhoo over her
appearance in French director Louis Malle's Pretty
Baby, a movie in which she played a child living 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.
After two decades of movies, her best-known films are
still arguably The Blue Lagoon (1980) (which included
more nude scenes, but Shields later testified before a
Congressional inquiry that older body doubles were used
in some of them), and Endless Love (1981), both made near
the beginning of her career.
Shields, who developed a strong sense of comic timing
as her acting career advanced into adulthood, has played
in a number of television productions, the most successful
being the series Suddenly Susan.
She was married from 1997 to 1999 to professional tennis
player, Andre Agassi. Since 2001 she has been married
to Christopher Thomas Henchy: they are parents of one
daughter, Rowan Francis, born in 2003.
She won the People's Choice Award in the category of
Favorite Young Performer in four consecutive years from
1981 to 1984 and more than a decade later she won again
in the category of Favorite Female Performer in a New
Television Series in 1997.
Her parents are the late Francis Alexander Shields who
married Brooke´s mother, Maria Theresia Schmonin,
in 1964. Her paternal grandparents are Francis Xavier
Shields, (a tennis star), and Italian princess Donna Marina
Torlonia di Civitella-Cessi, who was a sister of Don Alessandro
Torlonia, 5th Prince di Civitella-Cessi, the husband of
the Spanish Infanta Beatrix of Bourbon-Battenberg (aunt
of King Juan Carlos I of Spain). Through her Italian-American
grandmother, Brooke Shields is a descendant of Henri IV,
King of France, the Emperor Charles V, Lucrezia Borgia,
and Honore I, Prince of Monaco. Her great-grandmother,
Elsie Moore, was a sister of Glenn Close's grandfather.
Shields is "a 23rd generation descendant of Francesco
I Gattilusio, the founder of the Lesbian Gattilusii dynasty,"
according to William Addams Reitwiesner's monograph, The
Lesbian Ancestors of Prince Rainier of Monaco, Dr. Otto
von Habsburg, Brooke Shields, and the Marquis de Sade.
Beginning with undergraduate appearances in the Princeton
University Triangle Show, Shields has appeared in many
prominent on-stage productions, mostly musical revivals,
including "Grease" and "Wonderful Town"
on Broadway, the latter of which closed in 2005 to favorable
reviews.
In the spring of 2005, Brooke Shields spoke to magazines
and appeared on Oprah to publicize her battle with post-partum
depression, an experience that included depression, thoughts
of suicide, disturbing thoughts, an inability to respond
to her baby's needs, and delayed bonding. The illness
may have been triggered by a traumatic labour and delivery,
the death of Shields' father three weeks earlier, stress
from IVF, a miscarriage, and a family history of depression,
not to mention the hormones and life changes brought on
by child birth. Her book, Down Came the Rain, discusses
her experience. The title draws from the baby song "Itsy-Bitsy
Spider".
One interesting fact to note is that her legs are insured
by Lloyd's of London.
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