The actor’s new book is part memoir and part self-help manual for older women.
The actor’s new book is part memoir and part self-help manual for older women.
By Nathan Smith
February 18, 2025 — 11.00pm
AGEING
Brooke Shields is Not Allowed to Get OldBrooke ShieldsPiatkus, $34.99
There are only a handful of times when actress Brooke Shields proves disingenuous in her new book.
One is when Shields retells attending a screening of her 2023 documentary, Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields. While waiting in the wings, she assumes the reason the entire audience is standing at the film’s end is to exit the theatre. It’s up to the producer to pull Shields aside and reassure her, no, they are applauding for you.
Co-written with journalist Rachel Bertsche, the book sees the former child actor push back against her new status as a 50-something-year-old woman suddenly ignored, rendered invisible and deemed irrelevant. Whereas previous autobiographies explored her postpartum depression and the loss of her alcoholic mother, this one is part memoir and part manual for older women to find resilience and renewed purpose.
Shields recounts her experiences with menopause and ageism, her mistreatment of pain and her grief about life as an empty-nester. Each chapter blends statistics and news clippings about older women’s experiences with a revealing personal anecdote. One of the most damning tells of when Shields learned a doctor performed an unwanted “bonus” procedure to her vagina following preventative surgery. “This man surgically altered my body without my consent,” she writes.
Taking on actor Tom Cruise in a public war of words is a moment when Shields found the power of answering back. Cruise had criticised her use of antidepressants on TV when she was experiencing postpartum depression; she took a swing back at the “unschooled actor” thanks to the courage her own recovery had given her. Making her case against Cruise in a New York Times op-ed, Shields says her confidence only soared after the outpouring of support (and later, a private apology from Cruise).
Her earnestness, found in chapters on the importance of self-advocacy in healthcare, are where the actress is at her most compelling. When Shields experienced a grand mal seizure and collapsed in a restaurant, male hospital doctors were quick to assume her low sodium levels were owing to a weight-loss water “diet”. The entertainer had actually been drinking extra amounts of water to protect her voice for an upcoming one-woman show – a performance, ironically, to figuratively free herself from men dictating her career choices.
Often her greatest burden – as a woman long objectified as a female sex symbol – is men shaming her for growing old. At a recent cocktail party, the male host showed guests his extensive array of wines, including rare vintages. The actress took the moment to shatter illusions of her own enduring youth by giving her own “vintage” – her age. “I wish you didn’t tell me that,” the host curtly replied.
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There’s plenty of levity found, however, when Shields reflects on her overly sexualised celebrity image, one that started pre-teen with a movie called Pretty Baby: “Who knew, in a career where I starred as a prostitute at age 11 … that valuing myself at 59 would be my most provocative choice?”
The actor also can’t be faulted for her self-deprecation and honesty, admitting her stardom inures her from some hang-ups but not all, such as her need before photoshoots to tape her thighs to her Spanx to hide cellulite.
Sometimes her throwaway asides prove the most insightful – such as acknowledging Andre Agassi was “controlling” in their marriage or admitting to buying designer clothes but rarely wearing them – when making her case for embracing agency later in life. Even so, the substance behind Shields’ empowerment tutorials can sometimes read as insubstantial. Quotes from press releases (such as on happiness studies) and suspect survey results (like one finding women criticise themselves eight times a day!) don’t always pass muster.
Brooke Shields is Not Allowed to Get Old imperfectly grapples with the jarring vertigo older women often experience of feeling at their most confident at 50 but finding themselves sidelined by society. It’s a candid, if sometimes glib, project from one Hollywood star trying to push back against the narrative on “women of a certain age”.
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