Brooke Shields recalls THAT Tom Cruise spat over postpartum depression
PARK CITY, UTAH: Hollywood veteran Brooke Shields is the subject of Lana Wilson’s 'Pretty Baby', a hard-hitting documentary that explores the heart-wrenching parts of the acclaimed actress’ glamorous and turbulent past. The documentary, which debuted to an eager audience at the Sundance Film Festival on Sunday, January 22, captured the ‘Blue Lagoon’ star opening up about being sexually abused at the beginning her professional career.
The documentary also sheds light on Shields' Postpartum depression, which eventually forced her to take antidepressants, prompting criticism from Tom Cruise. In the documentary, the actress described the incident, in which Cruise publically retaliated against her for taking medicine, as "ridiculous", Variety reported. The incident reportedly took place in 2005 when the ‘Sahara’ star had just released her book 'Down Came the Rain: My Journey through Postpartum Depression', which chronicled her battle with postpartum depression following the birth of her daughter Rowan in 2003. In her book, she also described how therapy and medicine helped her get through the difficult time.
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The claims soon garnered immense criticism from Cruise, who is an ardent advocate of Scientology- which condemns mind-altering prescriptions of any kind. In a conversation with Matt Lauer on 'The Today Show', the ‘Mission Impossible’ star discussed his problem with antidepressants as he called Shields ‘dangerous’ for asserting that medicated drugs cured her depression. "I've never agreed with psychiatry, ever. Before I was a Scientologist, I never agreed with psychiatry, and then when I started studying the history of psychiatry, I started realizing more and more why I didn't agree with psychiatry," the actor told Lauer, according to Fox News.
Cruise’s opinions apparently did not go down well with Shields. The former ‘Suddenly Susan’ star immediately blasted his initial comments in an op-ed piece for The New York Times. In the article, Shields wrote, "I WAS hoping it wouldn't come to this, but after Tom Cruise's interview with Matt Lauer on the NBC show ‘Today’ last week, I feel compelled to speak not just for myself but also for the hundreds of thousands of women who have suffered from postpartum depression. While Mr Cruise says that Mr Lauer and I do not ‘understand the history of psychiatry,’ I'm going to take a wild guess and say that Mr Cruise has never suffered from postpartum depression."
As per Fox News, Shields continued, "Comments like those made by Tom Cruise are a disservice to mothers everywhere. To suggest that I was wrong to take drugs to deal with my depression and that instead I should have taken vitamins and exercised shows an utter lack of understanding about postpartum depression and childbirth in general.”
After nearly 18 years, Shields again reflected on the incident in her new documentary, which is scheduled to release on Hulu later this year. During one scene in the docu, the camera zooms in on the headline of her op-ed, “What Tom Cruise Doesn’t Know About Estrogen”. Elsewhere in the documentary, actor Judd Nelson is seen repeating a quote from Shields at the time that “Tom Cruise should stick to fighting aliens.”