Brooke Shields found it “exhilarating” to take her first trip alone at the age of 58 because she had spent so long with other people controlling her every move.
Brooke Shields found it “exhilarating” to take her first trip alone at the age of 58.
The 59-year-old actress – who has daughters Rowan, 21, and Grier, 18, with husband Chris Henchy – told how she felt controlled by her mother, who was also her agent, throughout her life, and visiting her eldest daughter in Italy proved to be a pivotal moment in her life because it was the first time she got to experience somewhere new without other people advising her.
In an extract from her book ‘Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed To Get Old’ published by the Daily Mail newspaper, she wrote: “When our eldest, Rowan, went off to study in Italy, I visited her there and spent the days solo while she was in classes. At 58, it was my first time being alone in a foreign city.
“I have spent my whole life travelling the world, but I was always with my mother or a bodyguard or an assistant or my husband or on a movie set with a handler of some kind.
“This trip, there was no assistant director telling me where to go, no PR person instructing me on talking points, no assistant reminding me that I have another Zoom in ten minutes, not even a family member with an obligatory agenda.
“To be roaming around Italy, with no one aware of exactly where I was… it was a bit unsettling. But also exhilarating!
“I wore a baseball cap and sunglasses, which meant I blended in with most American tourists, and that presented another form of freedom. I wandered into cafes and talked to store clerks and sat at the base of the Duomo with a Peroni, gazing up at the stunning architecture.
“I got lost and spent a lot of time on Google Maps, but it felt like a long-overdue rite of passage. I’m coming up to 60, but I’m still growing up and trying new things and learning about myself.”
The ‘Pretty Baby’ star knows her mom wanted to “protect” her when she was growing up but think she ultimately did her a “disservice” as she was left completely unable to cope on her own.
She wrote: “I went to Princeton University as a student, which should have been a liberation. But I was desperate to come home. And I was in New Jersey, only one state away from my mum. It wasn’t exactly like being in Europe. My very first semester, I cried and cried and cried.
“I would go home on Friday after my last class, stay for the weekend and drive back on Monday. Every week.
“I also made my mother drive out every Wednesday to take me out to dinner. I was so isolated – not because people were mean but because they were trying to give me my privacy. And being alone made me panic. It felt like wasted time. I wholeheartedly believed I should be filling every moment with conversation or fulfilling an obligation or checking a box.
“My mother hadn’t given me the tools I needed. She controlled me so much, in every possible way, that when I went to college and had to navigate the world on my own, I was in shock. I was like an open wound. Totally vulnerable…
My mother had made it her job to protect me, and while I did have a sense of always being tended to, loved and watched over (which can feel really nice as a kid), she also did me a disservice, because for so long I had no clue about how to actually protect myself or live on my own.”
Brooke Shields didn’t holiday alone until 58
