On a recent episode of her talk show, Drew Barrymore anointed Brooke Shields’s late mother, Terri, as Hollywood’s “original momager,” revealing that her own mom, Jaid Barrymore, “became a manager in honor of Terri Shields, because she was known in the industry as a great protector of you, the one who called the shots. And yet—I paid the rent, you paid the rent,” Barrymore said, pinpointing the complicated power dynamics they both navigated as child stars.
Shields’s new Hulu documentary, Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields, explores her turbulent childhood within the industry, which included sexualized film roles in movies such as The Blue Lagoon and Endless Love. Shields says she was also raped by an unnamed movie producer after college.
“It was all I knew, you know what I mean?” Shields told Barrymore of supporting her mother both emotionally and financially. “But we got stuff. It’s like, I did a movie and we got a car. All I knew was, keep my mother alive, keep dancing, and get stuff. But to emerge from it not angry or jaded…it’s something in your character, it’s in my character. Doing this documentary, it’s given me a life in the most interesting way.”
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The pair also bonded over the control their mothers wielded over their love lives. Barrymore, who appears in Shields’s documentary, shared that her mother was so “enamored” with her that she “wanted to be with the people I was with” and asked Shields if that was her same experience. “No, because she was in love with me,” Shields said. “I was her main focus. And both of us were gonna be cut off from our sexuality. I was gonna stay a virgin. She was going to be just Teri Terrific.”
Shields continued, “I don’t get it, but I get it. It’s so layered and it’s so needy. And it’s so sad and broken. We all were aspiring to get approval from our mommies and daddies. You either spend your life running away from, running towards, trying to not be like, trying to be like, your mother. And it’s primal. And you gotta go through the process of it. And it’s just a lot of work.”
