Brooke Shields Revealed She Was Sexually Assaulted by a Hollywood Executive 30 Years Ago

Brooke Shields is opening up about her traumatic past in a new interview with People. Her upcoming two-part Hulu documentary Brooke Shields: Pretty Baby, which premieres on April 3, will include the story of when the actress was sexually assaulted in her 20s by a Hollywood executive.

"Doing the documentary, you see it all together, and it's a miracle that I survived," Shields told People. "It's taken me a long time to process it. I'm more angry now than I was able to be then. If you're afraid, you're rightfully so. They are scary situations. They don't have to be violent to be scary."

At the time, Shields said she was afraid to tell someone because she thought they wouldn't believe her, saying, "People weren't believing those stories back then. I thought I would never work again."

During the documentary, Shields recalls a business dinner she took with an executive in the hopes of landing a job, but afterwards, he invited her to call her cab from his hotel room where he assaulted her. "I didn't fight," she remembers. "I just froze."

As many survivors do, she blamed herself. "I kept saying, 'I shouldn't have done that. Why did I go up with him? I shouldn't have had that drink at dinner.'"

"It was really easy to disassociate because by then it was old hat," she added. "And because it was a fight-or-flight type of choice. Fight was not an option, so you just leave your body. 'You're not there. It didn't happen.'"

The documentary will also touch on the over-sexualization of Shields from a young age in roles like Pretty Baby (in which she plays a child prostitute) and The Blue Lagoon. "I'd always had a sense of disassociation from my body. From my sexuality. I was mostly a cover girl, so it's all here," she said, referring to herself from the neck-up. "And it was just easier to shut myself off. I was good at it."

If you have experienced sexual violence and are in need of crisis support, please call the RAINN Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).