Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (April 18, 2000)
As a baby, Brooke Shields was the face of Ivory Soap. Ar age 3, she toddled down the catwalk for the first time. She was so striking in appearance that by age 8, she was featured in a toothpaste ad - that didn’t even show her teeth. I he same year, she landed her first movie role in “Alice, Sweet Alice.” Brooke became the first child client of Ford models, the casting agency for the world’s most beautiful women. At the tender age of 12, she became a national phenomenon when she portrayed Violet, the pre-teen prostitute in French director Louis Malles film, Pretty Baby. At the point when most young stars crash and burn or end up in rehab, Brooke Shields ended up at Princeton University, graduating in 1987 with honors in French literature. Perhaps more striking than her beauty or her intelligence is that after 30 years in the entertainment industry, it is virtually impossible to find anyone who dislikes Brooke. While she professes to have been a “brat” as a child, no one seems to recall it. On the contrary, Brooke is known for having a wicked sense of humor. What she never had was privacy. Brooke grew up in front of cameras. Her face has been used to sell fashion magazines and products ranging from IBM to Revlon. She was featured on the cover of Life three times, and was utilized as I he Face of the Eighties on Time magazine. However, life was not always perfect. Her mother was distinctly overbearing, and some of the decisions she made early in Brooke’s career are reflected today — in the nude photos of a coifed, 10-year-old Brooke circulating on the Internet. Along the way to college, Brooke somehow managed to have some “normal” childhood experiences - like participating in a school internship at the San Diego Zoo and developing a ghastly crush on singer George Michael (who later revealed to the world that he was gay). Of course, what made Brooke's crush different than any other high school girl’s was that she actually met and started to date the superstar. However, while she was smitten, George was not. He dumped the young, sensitive Brooke the week before she left for college. She cried for a week. v When Brooke went off to college, she wrote a book entitled, “On Your Own,” about college life - for which she received flack. She laughs when she thinks back to the experience. While she notes that some of the advice she gave remains pragmatic, she also acknowledges that her childhood and' perceptions were “different from
