Shields is talking frankly in her upcoming documentary, Brooke Shields: Pretty Baby, about her life and childhood — starting with being cast as a child prostitute at age 12 in 1978’s Pretty Baby and covering through the current day. The documentary will include a section in which Shields discusses a sexual assault perpetrated against her while she was in her 20s by a movie producer, according to People. Pretty Baby is directed by Lana Wilson, who also directed Taylor Swift’s Miss Americana. “It’s taken me a long time to process it,†Shields said to People. “I’m more angry now than I was able to be then. If you’re afraid, you’re rightfully so. They are scary situations. They don’t have to be violent to be scary.†Shields describes getting dinner with a Hollywood executive, who she believed was getting her a film role. After dinner, she says he invited her to call a cab in his hotel room, where he assaulted her. “I didn’t fight,†she says in the doc. “I just froze.â€
“It was really easy to disassociate because by then it was old hat,†she continued. “Because it was a fight-or-flight type of choice. Fight was not an option, so you just leave your body. ‘You’re not there. It didn’t happen.’â€
“I saw someone who gradually gained agency over her own life,†Wilson told People of her subject. “Brooke was open, game for anything, fearless. The only concern she voiced at that first meeting was that this wouldn’t be deep enough.†The documentary will be out on Hulu on April 3. “Everybody processes their own trauma on a different timeline,†Shields says. “I want to be an advocate for women to be able to speak their truth.â€