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Brooke Shields Interview
Could we talk about some of the gay artists you were close to? You worked with Mapplethorpe and Keith Haring— And Way Bandy and all those makeup and hair people as well. Keith took me out to dinner just prior to his dying. He gave me one of his original paintings with this incredible inscription on the back, and he told me that when he came to New York his first show was inspired by me. I had worked with Keith, but I never knew about that until he took me to dinner. In that show he put a photo of me in a Calvin Klein pose next to a photo of a naked man. It was a juxtaposition of the two and what each represented—pop culture and homosexuality and the coming-out of both sides. How did you think about the illness in terms of yourself? I realized even back then that young women weren’t exempt from this epidemic. But there was a sense of protection around me, whether it was sex or drugs. I went to Studio 54 regularly, and I can’t tell you a time that I saw or was offered drugs. I was like a little mascot. I guess it was also hard to shock me—my mom was just about as blatant as she could be. We talked about everything. I didn’t grow up with any kind of judgment. The most love I felt was in communities that were unconventional. I read a story you told about your mom taking you to a gay bar. Oh! My mom took us all to see Rocky Horror Picture Show—that was the only place it was playing. It was brand-new—I was around 7. There were guys and girls dancing in cages. We had the best time! That’s the way my mom was. The lines weren’t drawn that way. You had to be a good person and pick up the kitty litter and write thank-you notes and all that. But she had so little judgment about other people. Let’s talk about your movies. In The Misadventures of Margaret you play a glamorous lesbian. Did you prepare for the role any differently? I didn’t think to myself, Oh, I’m gonna play a lesbian, so I’m gonna have to act like a lesbian. I based it on the character, who was flamboyant and had a literary sense. Also, Brian Skeet, the director, was after that sense of Eve Arden and Irene Dunne and all those actresses from the ’30s and ’40s. So my character was really theatrical. It wasn’t like If These Walls Could Talk 2. The first segment [with Vanessa Redgrave as a newly widowed lesbian in 1961] just broke my heart. It infuriated me. In Black and White you play a filmmaker who’s married to Robert Downey Jr., whose character is gay. In the film you’re interviewing white kids who idolize hip-hop heroes. You costar with people like Power [from the Wu-Tang Clan] and Mike Tyson. People say, “The movie is about rap, right?” I say, “No, it’s about hip-hop, and hip-hop is a culture.” Hip-hop has a real voice, a sense of freedom, a style. And it stems from more than a flip-off to your parents. I grew up working in Manhattan, very cognizant of black culture, and it was very comfortable for me—whereas my father’s side of the family was very Long Island, upper-class, boarding school. They moved out of those urban areas. I always saw both sides, and I felt less comfortable out in Long Island. The whole film is improvised. You had no idea what you’d be shooting on any given day. No! We’d hang out on the street corner waiting to be called. It was like, maybe we’ll go to Power’s house because Tyson’s gonna show up there. Or Method Man’s doing a show—maybe we’ll go there. It would get later and later. We’d work from 4 or 5 in the afternoon until 4 or 5 in the morning. [Then] I went from guerrilla filmmaking in Black and White, where we were lucky if we got a street corner, much less a dressing room, to The Bachelor, where I worked for three days for more than the whole budget of Black and White. I got this enormous trailer, and they gave me a cell phone—because I don’t have one—and I was calling my agent saying, “This is really comfortable, but it feels really odd.” What projects are you working on? My show is over for good, so a four-year chapter has just been closed. I’m making a game plan now. It’s all about the work. I’m auditioning for stuff that I really like. After seeing If These Walls Could Talk 2, I’m thinking those are the kinds of projects I want to be doing. So your life is changing and changing—so much is happening to you. I look back, and in one year, I had my best friend die, I got a divorce, I had precancer surgery, and the show ended. I think it’s time to take a break. I want to keep exploring different parts of myself. Being a woman on my own, probably the biggest lesson I’m learning is that I’ve got to have faith in myself. My agent keeps saying, “I wish you would own up to your talent as well as your accomplishments.” And that’s probably the hardest thing for me to do. |
