The old top-model is at the heart of a documentary presented to the Sundance Film Festival, which questions the intense sexualization which she was the subject at the start of her career.
MO12345lemonde with AFP
In Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields, a documentary presented on Friday January 20 in preview at the Sundance Film Festival, in the United States, American actress Brooke Shields reveals that she was raped at the start of her Hollywood career. The old top -model kept the identity of its secret attacker, but said that, shortly after having graduated at university, she had found this man – whom she knew – for what she believed to be a working meeting, in order to discuss his participation in a casting for a new film.
The man took him to his hotel, then, pretending to want to call him a taxi from his room, he went to the bathroom before bringing out naked and raping it, -It entrusted. “It was like a fight … I was afraid of being suffocated or something like that,” said the actress in the documentary. “I did not debute myself much. I did not do it. I was just completely petrified. I thought my” no “should have been enough. And I only said to myself:” stay alive and go. “” Brooke Shields remembers having called after the assault on a friend who worked in security, Gavin de Becker, who said to him: “It’s a rape.” To which she replied: “I am not ready to believe it. “
Lubricate questions
Until now, the actress had never expressed herself publicly about her assault. This revelation, which echoes the #MeToo wave, is one of the many poignant moments of the film, which will be broadcast on the Hulu streaming platform in two parts. The first part is devoted to intense sexualization of which Brooke Shields was the subject very young, especially during a photo session bare at the age of 10, as well as after his appearance at 11 years in the film Pretty Baby, where she played a prostitute child.
The documentary shows a young Brooke Shields confronted with the lubricate questions of much older men in talk shows, about his roles in films like the blue lagoon or an infinite love, and in the controversial series of advertisements Calvin Klein. After having experienced a global celebrity during adolescence, the young woman went to Princeton University, where she graduated. She then had trouble finding roles, which led her to the sinister meeting with her rapist.
“My personal message is perseverance, and not allow yourself to become a victim in the eyes of a company or an industry,” she told the France-Presse agency ( AFP) before the first of the film at the festival, organized until January 29 in Utah. “I am proud of the way I continued to learn, grow, work and love what I do,” she added.
standing ovation
The documentary, which has earned M me shields a standing ovation in Sundance, also narrates the obsession of the media concerning the virginity of the actress, the alcoholism of her mother and her first Marriage to the tennis star Andre Agassi. Several of her famous friends are questioned, including Lionel Richie, Laura Linney and Drew Barrymore. The actress, who is now 57, said that it was “the right time in [her] life” to appear in a documentary.
Thursday had already been screened the justice documentary, which explores the accusations of sexual assault against Brett Kavanaugh, judge at the Supreme Court of the United States. First documentary by director Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity), he shows the testimony of Deborah Ramirez, one of the accusers of Mr. Kavanaugh, with whom she had studied in Yale.
Also appears the audio recording of a man who studied with them, who says he saw the judge, “very drunk”, showing off before another woman during a party. This last testimony was only published in the American media several months after the very controversial appointment of Mr. Kavanaugh, in 2018. The woman in question, whose identity is not revealed, declares that she does not remember the ‘incident. Brett Kavanaugh denied any sexual assault.