Consistently voted among the most beautiful people on earth, Brooke Shields began modeling when she was an infant. Clearly someone had a premonition that Shields would grow into a gorgeous woman, and whoever that was deserves kudos for their foresight. She also has proven herself a talented and versatile actress.
Born in New York City on May 31, 1965, Shields was brought up in a wealthy family with numerous ties to former European royalty, including her paternal grandmother Donna Marina Torlonia di Civitella-Cesi, an Italian princess. Shields was a successful child model, and was the youngest person ever to grace the cover of Vogue Magazine. She did so in 1980, at only 14 years old. The next year she became recognizable around the world with a famous Calvin Klein jeans campaign in which she uttered the famously suggestive line, “Nothing comes between me and my Calvins”.
Shields’ film career took off in 1978 when she was only 12, with the starring role in famed director Louis Malle’s film “Pretty Baby”. The film proved to be extremely controversial as Shields played a child prostitute and appeared in several nude scenes. Perhaps her best-known film is 1980’s “The Blue Lagoon”, in which Shields also had nude scenes. The actress was enormously popular during this period, becoming well-known for daringly racy roles in the aforementioned titles and Franco Zefferelli’s “Endless Love”, which featured a very young Tom Cruise in a small role. In 1983 she took a long break from acting to attend Princeton University, where she graduated with a degree in French Literature. During college she briefly dated the future “Lois & Clark” star Dean Cain, who was also a Princeton student at the time.
After college Shields continued her successful acting and modeling career, and in 1996 headlined the popular sitcom “Suddenly Susan”, which earned her two consecutive Golden Globe nominations. In 1997 Shields married tennis star Andre Agassi, but the pair divorced two years later.
In 2001 Shields married television writer Chris Henchy, with whom she has two children. She made public her battle with postpartum depression after the birth of her first child in 2003, which became household knowledge two years later during a brief but heated public feud with Tom Cruise, who criticized the actress for taking the anti-depressant Paxil. The pair exchanged quips in the press, with Shields famously advising Cruise that he should “stick to fighting aliens”. Ironically, Shields gave birth to her second child on April 18, 2006, the same day that Cruise’s girlfriend Katie Holmes gave birth to the couple’s already-famous daughter. However, regardless of one’s opinion concerning psychiatry, it’s no debate that Brooke Shields is a stunning, talented, and quick-witted actress that has delighted America for over thirty years.