Brooke Shields recently walked into her airy Manhattan apartment and was
greeted at the door by her beloved American bulldog, Darla, covered in
lipstick and make-up. Waddling behind the painted pooch was Shields’s
two-year-old daughter, Grier, arms outstretched, babbling: “I paint, I
paint, I paint.” “I was, like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ ” says the 43-year-old
actress, recalling the moment with a goofy, here-we-go-again eye roll.
A dirty dog and a bumbling child aren’t exactly a glamorous portrait for a
Hollywood sexpot. After all, Shields is the woman who, since the age of 14,
when she famously poured herself into a pair of skin-tight Calvin Klein
jeans and murmured the words “Do you want to know what comes between me and
my Calvins? Nothing”, has made millions selling the world an image of
overtly naive sexuality. But now, at an age when many women are struggling
with domestic disillusionment and most leading ladies are scrambling to
cover up any imperfection, physical or otherwise, Shields is just about
hitting her stride.
She’s the star of the critically acclaimed television show Lipstick Jungle,
happily married with two girls (the elder one is Rowan, 5), and as
unapologetically honest about it all as a Catholic at confession. “There’s
not a day goes by that I feel like I’m doing everything right or perfect,”
she says. “I’m on the set of Lipstick, committed, yes, but constantly
wondering how my kids are, where they are, sad when my daughter asks if she
can stay up until I get home — which, of course, I say yes to now, meaning
that both girls are in my bed at night, even though I said I would never
allow that.”
Ironically, the classic work v family tug-of-war that Shields faces on a daily
basis is what drew her to Lipstick Jungle. On the show, based on the book by
the author of Sex and the City, Candace Bushnell, she plays Wendy Healy, a
brash New York movie executive trying to balance a high-powered career with
a husband and an increasingly promiscuous teenage daughter. As in Sex and
the City, to which the series is often compared, Shields’s character cavorts
around Manhattan with two liberated female friends, finding love and losing
it, with a lot of shopping and office shenanigans along the way.
“I really appreciate how these three characters honestly reveal a very modern
concept of a woman, which isn’t a concept — it’s the truth,” Shields says.
“Wendy was written to not feel like she had to become a man to be in
business; to say, ‘I have children, do you have a problem with that?’ ” She
pauses, playing with the beaded chain she’s wearing, before adding a comment
that sounds more a reference to her personal life than her character:
“That’s not to say that she doesn’t go home and worry that people aren’t
respecting her professionally because she chose to have kids, and that a
healthy marriage means that somehow she’s not interesting.”
After all, Hollywood isn’t that forgiving of older actresses who take a break
from the industry, as Shields did, to raise a family. And the press couldn’t
care less about a woman with a stable private life. The show’s characters
are so hyper-confident and professionally successful, in fact, that Shields
says the top brass at the network were unsure about green-lighting a series
based on such brazen women. “The minute you start to make female characters
unapologetic, the network gets nervous and starts throwing around words like
‘likeability’ and ‘relatability’. But these are real women. Look around.”
Shields finds it infuriating that executives would want to dumb down
personalities for the sake of humanising them, or reaching a wider audience.
W For the time being, however, she is content with simply acting and getting
to know her co-stars, whom she genuinely gets on with. She and her two
on-screen pals, Kim Raver and Lindsay Price, make a point of spending some
off-set quality time together each week, be it grabbing a drink — Shields,
Belgian beer; the other two, white wine — or hitting the gym.
Clearly, she does more of the latter. Today, sitting primly in her publicist’s
office, she is the picture of polished perfection, with a flowing mane of
blown-out brunette hair, in a red blazer, white button-down shirt, and
fitted grey trousers that show off her lean physique. Quick to laugh and
imitate her daughters wandering around in the halls — both are strawberry
blondes, fair like their father — she seems happy to go through all the
motions that come with being the leading lady of a hot small-screen show:
photo shoots, interviews, radio spots and so on.
In a refreshing break from typical Hollywood-star behaviour, she doesn’t
waffle on about her opinions or hide behind her handlers. Nor does she care
to discuss the craft of acting or how lucky she feels to be given so many
opportunities, the typical actress fall-back talk. Instead, she holds a
conversation as if she were hosting a cocktail party, telling stories,
tossing in self-deprecating remarks, asking if anyone needs anything to
drink. In short, she’s a pro.
But then, if there’s one person who understands how to work the Hollywood
machine, it’s Shields. Born in New York City to a well-connected Wall Street
executive father and former-model mother, she made it big by 14, gracing the
cover of Vogue (reputedly as its youngest girl ever), posing in those
notorious Calvin Klein ads and swimming half-naked in The Blue Lagoon. When
roles started to dry up at the ripe old age of 18, Shields headed off to
Princeton, where she earned a degree in French literature. After a failed
marriage to the tennis star Andre Agassi, the actress finally got the break
she was looking for in 1996 — or so she thought — when she was cast as a
quirky magazine columnist on the television show Suddenly Susan. The show
was a hit, earning her two Golden Globe nominations, and it finally proved
she was much more than just a pretty face. It was also during this time that
she met her television producer and writer husband, Chris Henchy (Entourage,
Spin City).
“Then, for years, there was nothing good to do, and what was good wasn’t
mine,” she says. “I couldn’t just sit on my hands, so I decided to attack
Broadway.” In a risky move for any screen actress — think Julia Roberts
bombing in Three Days of Rain — Shields took on the role of the murdering
temptress Roxie Hart in Chicago. The critics loved her. The theatre sold out
every night. And then came the Tom Cruise fiasco.
For those who don’t keep up with the American tabloids, in 2005, Shields
appeared on Oprah, discussing her battle with postnatal depression after the
birth of her elder daughter, Rowan. Cruise, who soon after would have his
frantic couch-jumping freak-out on Winfrey’s show, publicly lambasted the
actress for using antidepressants. Shields fired back, saying the actor
should “stick to fighting aliens”, an allusion to Cruise’s enthusiasm for
Scientology. It was an ugly strike on Shields’s otherwise stellar record.
Today, she’s calm and collected when talking about the episode, quick to
point out that she wrapped up the argument by writing a thoughtful opinion
piece in The New York Times. “There was a passion behind it, and there had
to be a response, but it was hard being diplomatic,” says Shields, who, a
year later, in an only-in-Hollywood moment, attended Cruise’s wedding to
Katie Holmes.
Encouraged by the experience of writing, Shields is now at work on her second
children’s book, entitled The Best Day Ever, Dad, about her husband and
daughters. (She’s also the author of a memoir, Down Came the Rain: My
Journey Through Postpartum Depression.) For now, while she films the second
season of Lipstick Jungle in New York, the girls stay with her, and Henchy
joins them from LA, where he works, at the weekend. It’s not ideal, admits
Shields, but it’s the best she can do. “The city is the best place to raise
kids,” she says — she considers herself a “die-hard” New Yorker. Recently,
after she finished filming at the carousel in Central Park, she surprised
her daughters with free rides.
