brooke shields

Shield's early career was managed and pushed by her mother Teri Shields, a small-time actress, who placed her daughter in front of the camera before she was even one. As the Ivory Snow baby, Shields was once hailed the "most beautiful baby in America." After spending many years hawking products, she was in such demand that her mother started marketing her under the logo "Brooke Shields & Co." Shields made her feature film debut in Alice Sweet Alice (1976), but did not become a bona fide star until French director Louis Malle cast her as a 12-year-old New Orleans prostitute who becomes the romantic obsession of a much older painter in Pretty Baby (1978). The film was released amidst great controversy because of the scenes in which Shields (or a body double representing her) appeared nude. Through her teens, Shields was among the world's top fashion models and her countenance was everywhere. Controversy again stirred when she did some provocative ads for Calvin Klein in which she was seen wearing a too tight pair of jeans and cooed, "Nothing comes between me and my Calvins." This was in contrast to her other ads in which she advised young girls to abstain from sex and a different campaign against smoking. At the peak of her fame, Shields appeared three times on the cover of Life Magazine and once on the cover of Time. Her film career picked up around this time with appearances in King of the Gypsies (1978) and Wanda Nevada (1979), but her best known film is the classic The Blue Lagoon (1980) in which she and teenage hunk Christopher Atkins find themselves shipwrecked for years on a desert island. Ostensibly, the film is a tender tale about innocence and true love, but it's primarily a titillating romp filled with plenty of flesh shots of Shield's and Atkins taut, tanned and partially clad bodies. In 1981, Shields tried her hand with a more serious role in Franco Zeffirelli's tepid teen romance Endless Love. Shields then decided it was time for college and so enrolled in Princeton, where but for the occasional appearance on a Bob Hope television special, made for TV movie or other special event, she immersed herself in college life. While there, she majored in French Literature and became interested in the theater, gaining experience in two regional productions of Love Letters. Shields graduated from Princeton with honors. Upon her graduation, Shields returned to acting full-time and appearing in films that can most kindly be described as mediocre. In 1996, Shields was given her own situation comedy on the ABC network, Suddenly Susan, playing a single career girl struggling to reassemble her life following her break-up with her wealthy fiance. Shields was formerly married to tennis great Andre Agassi.