Best known as the mother of actress Brooke Shields, Teri Shields was desperate to make her daughter famous — and would do anything to make it happen.
Jack Mitchell / Getty ImagesBrooke Shields with her mother and director , Teri Shields , in 1981 .
In the 1978 filmPretty Baby , a 12 - year - honest-to-goodness Brooke Shields play a child whore who seduced and shared an on - screen kiss with an adult man played by then-29 - year - old Keith Carradine . The character was shameful and controversial in its own right — but more shocking is the fact that young Brooke ’s manager was none other than her own female parent , Teri Shields .
In fact , Pretty Babywas just the first of several controversial motion-picture show part and modeling line that Teri allowed Brooke to accept . before long after , at 14 , the actress appear inThe Blue Lagoon , in which she was nude for a substantial portion of the picture . And at 15 , she posed for a series of suggestive Calvin Klein advertising with the tagline : “ Nothing get between me and my Calvins . ”
Jack Mitchell/Getty ImagesBrooke Shields with her mother and manager, Teri Shields, in 1981.
And throughout each of those job , Teri Shields was there , collapse her mould of blessing and direct her daughter ’s choices . That is until Brooke start manage her own life history in her 20s and the two had an acute falling out . Brooke would later on speak openly about Teri ’s alcoholism — which left the young actress feel that she was in reality the caretaker in their relationship .
This is the controversial tale of Teri Shields , the female parent and handler of one of the biggest actress of the 1980s .
How Teri Shields Went From Her Newark Roots To A New York Socialite
Theresia Anna Lilian Schmon was hold on Aug. 11 , 1933 , in Newark , New Jersey . According toThe New York Times , she spent the first 30 years of her biography there work as a hairstylist , makeup creative person , and model . But she discover her honest calling in 1965 when she gave birth to her daughter , Brooke .
As Brooke Shields later wrote of her mother , “ It was then that Teri found her career . ” Brooke ’s birth was the end resolution of a short - lived romanticism between Teri and a moneyed New Yorker named Francis Alexander Shields . His family never sanction of his family relationship with Teri , and they had even judge to devote her to terminate her pregnancy . She did n’t , so Frank proposed .
They divorced just five months after Brooke was born .
Bettmann/Getty ImagesTeri Shields and Brooke Shields circa 1978.
Bettmann / Getty ImagesTeri Shields and Brooke Shields circa 1978 .
“ He was very young , ” Teri Shields toldPeoplein a 1978 interview . At the prison term , she was 30 and Frank was 23 . “ He require to be adventuresome . I did n’t bear in mind . ”
Six months later , when Brooke was just timid of one year old , Teri book her daughter ’s first molding job : an ad for Ivory Soap . The gig only pay $ 25 , but it opened the Bill Gates to other opportunities with large brands like BAND - AID and Colgate .
Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty ImagesBrooke Shields and Teri Shields at the CBS Television Competition SpecialCelebrity Challenge of the Sexeson 5 February 2025.
As more jobs and money came in , Teri Shields made herself sleep with amongst New York ’s upper form while at the same time playing the part of female parent , coach , and socialite .
By the timePretty Babycame out , however , Teri had also developed a serious addiction to alcohol . Brooke tried to represent several interventions without success .
“ I rise up in an alcohol-dependent household , ” Brooke toldThe New York Timesin 1994 . “ I ’m the caretaker who desire to make everything better , and you could just do that for so long , or so I ’ve been say . ”
Sonia Moskowitz/IMAGES/Getty ImagesTeri Shields and Brooke Shields posing for a photo in New York, 1981.
Teri ’s addiction , along with several poor management decision , at last caused a rift between female parent and daughter . In the early 1990s , shortly after Brooke graduate from college , the unseasoned starlet made the decision to manage her own career — and let her mother go .
The Strained Relationship Between Brooke Shields And Her Mother
Teri and Brooke Shields had a complex family relationship . From the outside , it could be gentle to say that Teri had exploited her daughter for money and celebrity by grant her to star in sexually provocative roles at a untested age . In fact , she responded to this critique on a livetelevision interview with Bill Boggsa few year afterPretty Babycame out , effectively saying that she felt people were just jealous .
She also spoke frankly about why she felt Brooke appealed to so many masses .
“ They see total innocence , which is totally there , ” she said . “ And … they have the sexy child too , they have the sexy someone — that appeals to them . ”
Ron Galella / Ron Galella Collection via Getty ImagesBrooke Shields and Teri Shields at the CBS Television Competition SpecialCelebrity Challenge of the Sexeson March 23 , 1980 .
Brooke Shields has also maintained that her other office did n’t cause her any “ distress or mortification , ” and that her female parent playact as a protector who sustain her aside from the sorts of grave berth that have affected other Hollywood actress over the old age .
At the same time , however , there was Teri ’s drunkenness .
How Teri Shields’ Struggles With Alcohol Impacted Her Daughter’s Life
“ I was preoccupied with [ my mother ’s ] imbibing , ” Brooke Shields once said in an interview withStuff . “ I understood I needed to take care of her . She was my life root and it made me be less implicated about myself and therefore less confident . I was always seek to anticipate spot and be ahead of the plot . It took aside the power for me to ever really relax . ”
By the prison term Brooke was in her 20s , her mother was recondite in the throes of alcoholism , which influenced her decision both as a female parent and as a manager . This ultimately leave to a dramatic split between the two in 1995 .
Over a single weekend , Brooke , her then - husband Andre Agassi , and his squad emptied out her mother ’s post in Norwood and canceled all of the society acknowledgment posting that Teri had memory access to , perNJ.com . For a time , the two did n’t mouth . When they did finally patch things up , it was clear that Teri ’s crapulence had only gotten worse .
In fact , when Brooke wed her second married man , Chris Henchy , in 2001 , the police force had to be called to the wedding ceremony when Teri got drunk and became disorderly .
“ My mother loved me , but the nursing bottle always won , ” Brooke wrote in her memoir , There Was a minuscule Girl , which explores her family relationship with her mother . “ There was not one major moment or natal day festivity during which she could stay sober … I persist out of ways of ask her to quit . Tears did n’t work , rage did n’t work , plea when sober did n’t ferment , and alphabetic character did n’t form . Other people try and I implore . ”
Sonia Moskowitz / IMAGES / Getty ImagesTeri Shields and Brooke Shields posing for a photo in New York , 1981 .
When Brooke Shields had child of her own , she hop that becoming a gran would behave as a catalyst for Teri to bar drink . regrettably , Teri ’s addiction was replace by another disease : dementia .
“ It was disgraceful and nothing could have prepared me for it , ” Brooke say . “ The person literally disappears . They are there in front of you and you ca n’t reach them . And there was utterly nothing I could do . ”
When Teri Shields ultimately passed away , her daughter write a light necrology for her inThe New York Times . in short after , theTimespublished an article that painted Teri Shields as a desperate mother who forced her girl to be a model and star inPretty Baby . That article prompted Shields to writeThere Was a Little Girl , almost as if to go down the record straight .
In the end , it ’s difficult to pin down who , exactly , Teri Shields really was . Her narrative shows , perhaps more than anything else , that humans are complex and multi - faceted — and sometimes at state of war with themselves in a path they ca n’t ever seem to escape .
After pick up about Brooke Shields ’ “ momager , ” Teri Shields , say aboutHedy Lamarr , who was consult to by many as “ the most beautiful woman in the universe . ” Then , go inside the decease of Hollywood starletAudrey Hepburn .
