Brooke Shields has shared how disturbing she found it when Barbara Walters asked her about her body during a 1981 interview.
At the time, the actress was only 15-years-old and had just starred in The Blue Lagoon, a teen love story set on a deserted island that saw her with little clothing on.
While on the Dinner’s On Me podcast hosted by Jesse Tyler Ferguson, the 60-year-old shared how put off she was by the questioning in what is now regarded as a highly controversial interview.
‘It’s insane that Barbara Walters asked me my measurements. Like wow — like people are … what?’ said the New Yorker.
Shields said she answered the question but she now wishes she had handled it differently. ‘I did it. Like, I didn’t brush it off or anything. If someone asked me that now, I’d come back with some kind of a quip,’ noted the star.
Brooke Shields has shared how disturbing she found it when Barbara Walters asked her about her body during a 1981 interview. Seen in 2005
At the time, the actress was only 15-years-old and had just starred in The Blue Lagoon, a teen love story set. Pictured next to Christopher Atkins
Still the former Vogue model said she was perhaps too sensitive.
‘I think also it’s like, I took everything personally, and I kind of still do. I’m much better now at not letting it affect me so much,’ said the mother of two.
Walters – who died in 2022 at 93 – never apologized for the question, said Shields: ‘Oh no — because that’s not in her nature.
Still, when Shields and Walters were photographed together in 2005 and then again in 2016, they looked like old friends with no grudges between them.
Shields brought up the same subject in 2022 while on The Drew Barrymore Show.
‘She would not relent,’ said the former child star of Walters. Shields said she felt that Walters wanted ‘the negative sound bite.’
Shields explained: ‘She asked me what my measurements were and asked me to stand up, and I stand up and she’s like comparing herself to this little girl, and I thought, “This isn’t right. I don’t understand what this is.”
Walters asked Shields what her ‘measurements’ were before standing next to her to show ‘how tall and slim’ the child actress was
During the interview, Walters also asked about her mother Teri, who was sitting next to her the entire time
‘But I just, I behaved and smiled and felt like so taken advantage of in so many ways.
‘But over the years, you know when you’ve been in the public eye and have been commented on all the time, everybody has an opinion, and you all get to say it, and now that’s where social media I think can be dangerous.
‘Then you learn to say no this is my truth,’ Shields added.
Walters also asked about Shields’ mother Teri, who was an alcoholic. It was made especially awkward because Teri was sitting next to her daughter during the entire chat.
When Walters asked if she feels she was missing out on her childhood, Shields replied: ‘I’m still going through my childhood, so I can’t say I didn’t.’
Still, when Shields and Walters were photographed together in 2016, they looked like old friends with no grudges between them
Shields at the Dutton Ranch premiere in New York City on Tuesday
Then when asked how she felt sitting down and doing interviews, Shields said: ‘I’d rather do this than not do it at all. I enjoy this. It’s an experience that I would not like to miss.’
When quizzing Shields Walters also turned to her mother Teri to ask her how she felt about claims she’d taken her daughter’s childhood away, something they both denied at the time.
Shields has since opened up about her sometimes strained relationship with her late mother, who passed away in 2012, whom she describes as an alcoholic in her memoir.
Teri began promoting her daughter as a child model and actress when she was an infant, and allowed her to be cast as a child prostitute in the 1978 film Pretty Baby.
Teri also arranged for a photographer to take nude photos of her child when she was just 10, telling Bill Boggs that her daughter was ‘at an age where she couldn’t talk back.’
