Brooke Shields is offering more details about her public falling-out with Tom Cruise — and why she wrote that 2005 op-ed.
“Had Tom taken a public swing at me before I became a mother, I probably would have stayed quiet. I would have ignored his ridiculous rant. I might have been content to sit back while this very famous man hijacked my experience to advance his own (deluded) agenda,” Shields, 59, wrote in her latest memoir, Brooke Shields is Not Allowed to Get Old: Thoughts on Aging as a Woman. “I would have been satisfied that his behavior would speak for itself.”
Cruise’s comments from 2005 came just after Shields turned 40. She explained in the book — released on Tuesday, January 14 — how this changed her perspective.
“Sitting quietly and letting myself be attacked might have been my approach a decade earlier — I might have even regretted sharing my story or felt insecure that maybe my career was stalling while a powerful male movie star was singling me out, sure that I’d never stand a chance in that fight — but now I was emboldened by life experience,” Shields wrote, adding that she was “growing into my self-confidence.”
For a little backstory, Shields released her Down Came the Rain memoir in May 2005, detailing her experience with postpartum depression after welcoming daughter Rowan, now 21. (Along with Rowan, Shields and husband Chris Henchy also share 18-year-old daughter Grier.)
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Following the release, Cruise went on the Today show and “disparaged me,” Shields wrote. Cruise, she recalled, referred to her “use of antidepressants” as “dangerous.”
“I was, according to Tom, spreading misinformation,” she wrote. “An interesting opinion, coming from someone without ovaries.”
In response, Shields published an op-ed in The New York Times.
“I was sticking up for myself, and for women who were suffering, against irrational and dangerous comments from an unschooled actor who was speaking way out of his depth,” Shields wrote in Brooke Shields is Not Allowed to Get Old, noting that while her op-ed “sparked outrage” at Cruise, it also “spurred discussions on the reality and prevalence of postpartum depression.”
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Shields confirmed in her book that Cruise “eventually” apologized for starting the feud, albeit “not publicly.” Per Shields, the actor went to her house and they had a conversation.
It wasn’t the world’s best apology, but it’s what he was capable of, and I accepted it,” she wrote.
Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old is out now.
