Laura Linney reveals how she and pal Brooke Shields protected themselves from her alcoholic mom
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: ‘Falling’ actress Laura Linney, who is also a childhood friend of Brooke Shields, recently revealed how she was worried for Shields when she bagged her first advertisement assignment.
In her recently released documentary on Hulu named ‘Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields’, the ‘Pretty Baby’ star, 57, bared all her experiences about being a sexualized child actress in tinsel town in the '70s and '80s, and her relationship with her mother, who was also the ‘The Blue Lagoon’ star’s manager. The ‘Ozark’ actress, 59, also graced the docuseries where she shared her experience of growing up with Shields, along with throwing insight into the personality of Shields’ mother, Teri.
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Recalling the time when the 'Endless Love' actress would go to California from New Jersey for the first few times to film her advertisements, there would be whispers among the primary schoolers. “The sort of whispers around the school, like "She's gone to California," third graders, fourth graders like "Where'd she go?" reminisced Linney.
She also revealed how incomprehensible it was to feel what Shields went through. “And I would remember seeing the ad campaigns come in, like opening the paper and seeing her face, and it was hard to comprehend,” said the before adding, “I just always remember thinking I hope she's okay.” Once she reposted a photo of them together with the caption, "My sweet childhood friend @Brookeshields posted this today and I thought I would do the same. I remember this picture being taken....isn’t that crazy!?!? Don’t we look swell? #oldfriends."
‘And when she was not in a good way…’
Being one of the closest friends of Shields, she revealed being terrified of Teri but not without adding she was “fun and loud”. “When Teri was sober she was raucous and fun and loud and big and took up space,” recalled the Oscar nominee before adding, “And when she was not in a good way it was duck and cover.”
Giving an insight into how Shields’s childhood must have been, Linney said Teri often came back home drunk when the two young girls were playing. Shields knew what to do in such a situation. The ‘Wild Iris’ star said, “I would follow her lead, she would know what to do, how to do it, how to protect herself, what room to go into, what doors to lock.”
She further added, “We could both hear the keys would rattle, we would go to a room, we would make sure we were safe, Teri would come home very drunk and then we would wait until it got quiet, and then we would come out.”
‘I feel bad for that girl’
In the same documentary, Shields narrated her relationship with the ‘Superman’ star Dean Cain with whom she also lost her virginity. The ‘Lipstick Jungle’ star reminisced that while ‘The Way Home’ actor was “more comfortable” with “the sexual part” of their love, she wished it to be more personal. “I wanted to jump into the personal relationship and the love and the commitment,” described the ‘Endless Love’ actress before adding, “We had to teach each other about each other.”
However, she has traveled a long path as she now has a “sort of a regret for lost exploration and opportunity to understand my personal sexuality,” and added, “I feel bad for that girl. She was old enough to own her own body for real. And … just I couldn’t get there at that moment.”
Shields rose to fame when she was 11 by playing the role of a prostitute in the 1978 drama ‘Pretty Baby’ and later appeared nude in ‘The Blue Lagoon’. She also had to pose nude for a photoshoot when she was just 10 which her mother allowed.