Jan. 21 (UPI) — Actress Brooke Shields got a standing ovation Friday at the Sundance Film Festival following the premiere of a new documentary in which she alleges she was raped by a unnamed Hollywood figure.
The 57-year-old Shields was acknowledged by attendees following the first screening of the documentary Pretty Baby at the Utah gathering, The Daily Beast and Variety reported.
In the film, Shields claims she was raped decades ago in her early 20s, when the former child star was looking for work following her graduation from Princeton University.
The actress does not name her alleged attacker in the two-part documentary, but does give details about what she says happened after meeting the film industry figure for dinner on the pretense of finding work.
“I thought it was a work meeting. I had met this person before, and he was always nice to me,” Shields says in the film, according to Entertainment Weekly.
“He said, ‘Come back to the hotel and I’ll call a cab.’ And I go up to the hotel room, and he disappears for awhile. The door opens, the person comes out naked, and I’ve got the binoculars and I’m like, ‘S….’ And I put the binoculars down and he’s right on me. Just like, was wrestling.”
Shields, who has spoken publicly about her struggle with postpartum depression, says she “didn’t fight that much.”
“I just absolutely froze,” she says in the film. “I thought one ‘no’ should’ve been enough, and I just thought, ‘Stay alive and get out,’ and I just shut it out. God knows I knew how to be disassociated from my body. I’d practiced that…. I went down in the elevator, and I got my own cab. I just cried all the way to my friend’s apartment.”
The documentary details her rise as a child star in Hollywood, being labeled a sex symbol from a young age and walking away temporarily to attend Princeton. She was making her first real attempt to get back in front of the camera when the sexual assault happened, she says.
Shields laments how she was sexualized at a young age. At the age of 11, she appeared nude in director Louis Malle‘s 1978 film Pretty Baby, where she kissed actor Keith Carradine, who was 29 at the time.
The name of the documentary is a nod to that film.
The documentary also discusses her similarly provocative role in 1980’s The Blue Lagoon, in which Shields appears nude at age 12.
“They wanted to make it a reality show,” she says in the documentary. “They wanted to sell my sexual awakening.”
The film also touches on her brief marriage to tennis star Andre Agassi and features appearances by friends Laura Linney, Lionel Richie and Drew Barrymore, who provides her own insights on growing up in Hollywood.
