Brooke Shields Comes Clean About Growing Up With a Momager More Extreme Than Kris Jenner

In her new memoir, There Was a Little Girl: The Real Story of My Mother and Me, Brooke Shields chronicles her complicated relationship with her mother. Teri Shields, who died in 2012 from complications from dementia, was both Shields’ mom and manager. Now it’s a commonplace role— Kris Jenner, anyone?—but decades ago, this stage-mom-on-steroids act was new. Teri was an alcoholic and a control freak, but this is not, Shields writes, “a Mommie Dearest tale.” In fact, the book really serves as a story of her inner life, from her early modeling years to movie stardom to a dating life that included everyone from John Travolta to JFK Jr. And then there was the crush on George Michael, losing her virginity at 22 to Dean Cain, and those infamous Calvin Klein denim ads. Long before there was Cara Delevingne and her larger-than-life eyebrows or a naked Kate Moss in her Calvin Klein briefs, there was Brooke Shields. Here are a few of her most telling moments in the book.

Brooke and Teri Shields, 1978. Getty Images

On her relationship to her mom:
My life—those forty-eight years of it—always existed somehow in reaction to hers. She affected everything in my life. She was at the apex of it all. Nearly everything I did was for her, in response to her, because of her, or in spite of her.

On her beauty:
Even before I could talk… people often remarked to my mother about my looks being rather extraordinary.

On her first job:
One of her photographer friends phoned in a panic. “We need a baby who can kiss.” He was shooting an Ivory soap ad…

On her unusual upbringing:
I remember when she taught me to shoot pool behind my back. I couldn’t have been older than eight and I learned fast. When I’d excitedly called my father and said, “Dad! I just learned how to shoot pool from behind my back,” I remember him saying: “Where are you?”
“At a bar,” I said.
“Jesus Christ.”

On Woody Allen:
Woody Allen asked my mother out on a date and she went…It turned out the date was uneventful. She explained that Woody was too neurotic and was in too much therapy for her liking.

On Pretty Baby:
As a mother of an 11-year-old today, I am equally clear that I, myself, would not allow my daughter to be photographed topless. But it was a different time, and not only did my mother really believe we were creating art, but this film was special, too.

On her mom’s violence:
Once, when she was drunk, she got so angry with me for some little thing that she tipped over a full room-service table. Food went everywhere and one plate bruised the outer part of my eye. I wished it had cut it so I could show her the next day and make her feel bad.

On Tom Cruise:
She looked out for a young Tom Cruise, who had been hand-chosen by Franco [Zeffirelli] to play a bare-chested boy with a short but memorable scene shot in Central Park…Years later Tom would recall how kind my mother had been to him during the shoot. We were sitting alone in my living room in LA, and Tom had come to personally apologize to me for attacking me on the Today Show for my use of antidepressants to treat postpartum depression. He said my mom had made it a point to look after him on the set of Endless Love and he’s “never forgotten it.”

On “Nothing comes between me and my Calvins”:
Now, in hindsight, it is possible that somebody in the writers’ room had an inkling that there might be different ways the statement could be interpreted, but I maintain that I was never aware of the double entendre.

On Studio 54:
I was like a mascot or somebody’s kid sister. I don’t know if people cared that my mother was there, or if they just tried to shield me from the darker side of nightclub life.

On Princeton life:
The paparazzi tried to sneak onto campus, dressed like what they thought college students looked like, and follow me around…another attempted to bribe a Mathey College freshman to take a camera into the showers and snap me in the nude. They would have been in for a surprise if they tried, because I had taken to showering in a one-piece bathing suit!

On dating:
Basically my “relationships” had always been orchestrated by my mother in one way or another…She didn’t focus on romance (never mind love), but instead wanted to associate me with names that connoted fame, money, and power…She loved that I had briefly dated John Travolta, Jimmy McNichol, Leif Garrett, Scott Baio, and John Kennedy…

On George Michael dumping her:
He looked deep into my eyes and said, “I think we need to take a break. I need to concentrate on my career.” WHAM!

On waiting so long:
When I was twenty-two, I finally lost my virginity. Dean and I had been together for what seemed like a lifetime…I confess that I wish I had not made him wait as long as he did—for his sake and mine.