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Brooke Shields was 14 when she first visited Australia, 47 years later she has some advice
Exclusive: When Brooke Shields looked back on her first Australian visit at age 14 she had one thing to say.
“Oh my god, I remember that,” the 61-year-old reacted as she was shown a photo of her Aussie teen magazine cover from 1979.
Brooke Shields circa 1981 shortly after Blue Lagoon was released. Getty
Shields was a teenage superstar on the cover of Dolly. She was in Sydney, promoting her 1979 drama Tilt, and just so happened to be nearby in Fiji shooting a little film called Blue Lagoon.
“I do remember Dolly magazine,” said two-time Golden Globe nominee, who returns to screens this week for Stan’s exclusive new comedy You’re Killing Me.
“I remember not getting on the cover of Seventeen, I did a cover try and I didn’t make it. But then Dolly put me on, so I felt like I was validated,” she smiled.
Her accomplishments in her sixties feel just as validating.
The mum-of-two leads addictive crime comedy You’re Killing Me, not only as an actress but as an executive producer on the series that’s already renewed for its second season.
“I never had anybody trust my opinion and I fought so hard and have been so involved in every decision and every script change, it’s a lot of work,” she explained.
“But it’s allowed me to trust my instincts and look at my whole career and say, you’re still doing this, you must have figured something out.
“That you might be smarter than you realise or than Hollywood allows you to believe.”
Amalia Williamson joins Shields in new crime comedy drama You’re Killing Me. Mike Tompkins/AcornTV
Trusting herself more is what Shields would tell her young self on the cover of that magazine.
“I just wanted to please people so much that I kind of didn’t listen to my own heart. I was just so insecure,” she admitted.
“So I would just say, trust yourself. You’re good, you’re smart, and you can speak up for yourself a little more, but I didn’t.
“It took me a while to get there.”
Shields had a message to her younger self. YouTube / ABC News US
The actress plays bestselling novelist Allie in the series who joins forces with a young aspiring podcaster to investigate the murder of a close friend.
With a generational clash bound to leave you laughing, Shields feels very lucky to be returning to screens. But more importantly, celebrate who she is today.
“I don’t cling to the past,” she revealed.
“It was a different era when I was ascending in this really weird way which I had nothing to do with, like it just happened,” she said of her childhood fame.
“You try not to get hooked into that being any more valuable than today, you know?”
Shields confessed not even her own daughters, Rowan, 23, and Grier, 20, realise how iconic she was. And she prefers it that way.
Shields with her husband and two daughters Rowan and Grier. Instagram
“I don’t think it behooves them to because I’m their mum and if you really fully delve into whatever that iconography is, it means I’m not theirs, that the world kind of owns me,” she explained.
“I think it took me a little while to realise that because I found myself going, ‘I was cool don’t you know that?’ and then you sort of sit there going, ‘Oh no they don’t want to share you with the world’.”
Shields is happy to let her kids see her as just “mum”.
“I think maybe when they’re older they might see some of the work I’ve done.”
As for whether Shields will come back to Australia anytime soon?
She responded: “I love Australia, I love Australians, I love everything Aussie. Some of my best mates are literally from Perth, Melbourne and Sydney.”
“I think it’s time I get back there and do a movie or something. Something maybe outback,” she beamed.
The brand-new series You’re Killing Me premieres August 17, only on Stan.