9 Shocking Stories Of Hollywood Stage Parents Who Exploited Their Own Kids

Published September 8, 2021
Updated October 20, 2021

Brooke Shields And Her Sexually Exploitative Stage Mother

Brooke Shields And Teri Shields

Jack Mitchell/Getty ImagesBrooke Shields and her stage mother Teri Shields in 1981.

With her father a Revlon executive and her mother a Manhattan socialite-turned-actress, Brooke Shields was destined to make a splash. Yet her stage mother Teri Shields had troubling notions of what that meant.

Teri Shields began managing her daughter when she was just 11 months old. Her first gig was as a model for Ivory Soap, but the real trouble started with a $450 Playboy shoot that a href=”https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/04/brooke-shields-pretty-baby-anniversary” rel=”noopener” target=”_blank”>featured 10-year-old Shields naked. The shoot notes described her as: “A young vamp and a harlot, a seasoned sexual veteran, a provocative child-woman, an erotic and sensual sex symbol, the Lolita of her generation.”

Then came 1978’s Pretty Baby, in which the now 12-year-old was filmed nude and forced to kiss her adult co-star Keith Carradine. As People reported at the time: “Brooke Shields, 12, stirs furor of child porn in films.”

That trend only worsened. Teri Shields then booked her 14-year-old on The Blue Lagoon, a 1980 film that featured nude sex scenes between Shields and an adult male actor who played her brother. The movie garnered the attention of the government which dropped her as a non-smoking advocate and then held a Congressional inquiry in to the film.

Brooke Shields In Pretty Baby

Paramount/Getty ImagesA 12-year-old Brooke Shields seducing Keith Carradine in 1978’s Pretty Baby.

Shields testified that her Blue Lagoon sex scenes were filmed with a body double, and that her image as a child sex symbol was a bad reason to drop her from anti-smoking campaign. Then the oversight committee asked Shields about her Playboy spread.

“She [Teri Shields] thought it was alright if I did it,” said Shields replied. Her mother became visibly upset when handed a copy of the porn magazine which featured her 10-year-old daughter, but admitted that at the time she found the photos to be “beautiful.”

Shields later tried to prevent the full-frontal shots from being republished but lost the case when Justice Edward Greenfield ruled that a child was bound by the consent of their guardian. While he shamed Brooke’s mother, he also deemed the images to be “not erotic” — except to “perverse minds.”

“I was such a naive, innocent child,” Shields later said. “I wasn’t Lolita. I didn’t have that precocious understanding of my sexuality.”

author
Marco Margaritoff
author
A former staff writer for All That’s Interesting, Marco Margaritoff holds dual Bachelor's degrees from Pace University and a Master's in journalism from New York University. He has published work at People, VICE, Complex, and serves as a staff reporter at HuffPost.
editor
John Kuroski
editor
John Kuroski is the editorial director of All That's Interesting. He graduated from New York University with a degree in history, earning a place in the Phi Alpha Theta honor society for history students. An editor at All That's Interesting since 2015, his areas of interest include modern history and true crime.