Eighties “It Girl” Brooke Shields started out as a child model, also starring in a series of controversial movies, including Pretty Baby (1978) and The Blue Lagoon (1980). The latter film launched her to stardom when she was just 15. Now, Shields is recounting her experience as a child in the film industry in a two-part Hulu documentary called Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields. While doing press for the film, the actor has also talked about romantic relationships she had when she was younger, including a brief encounter with the late John F. Kennedy Jr. Read on to find out what Shields had to say about Kennedy, and why she felt he “showed his true colors” when she rejected his advances.
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Shields sat down with Howard Stern on his SiriusXM radio show The Howard Stern Show earlier this week. During the interview, she revealed that she first met Kennedy—often referred to as “John-John”—while she was in Aspen, Colorado, for a wedding.
The actor admitted that she’d been “so madly in love” with Kennedy, the son of President John F. Kennedy, since she was a child. Her mother would even tell her that John-John was the man she was going to marry.
Stern suggested that she could’ve approached Kennedy with confidence, but Shields said that was not the case. When he invited her to hit the slopes, Shields nervously agreed, even though she’d never skied before. As a result, she had to be “ski lifted” off of the mountain, the actor said while laughing, adding that Kennedy “didn’t help her.”
At that point, Shields was so enamored, she recalled thinking, “It’s OK, he can’t help me—he’s John-John.”
She later accepted when he invited her out, but his failure to assist her on the mountain might have been an early red flag.
Shields recalled that Kennedy kept telling her she looked like his mother, Jackie Onassis, which she said was “a compliment,” but that she didn’t know how to feel about her date comparing her to his mom.
As for the date, Stern questioned where Kennedy took her, as the pair were “two of the most famous people in the world” at that time. Shields said that they went to a pub with the rest of his family, where there were “bar fights and drinking.” Realizing the situation, Kennedy asked if she wanted to leave.
“I was like, ‘Uh, yeah, I do want to get out of here, John Kennedy,” she said, laughing again. The pair took a cab back to the chalet where Kennedy was staying, and that’s where they shared what Shields called “the best kiss I’ve ever had in my life.”
Stumbling over her words, Shields added, “The lips are beautiful, and that face is amazing, and the body and the person—and he was down to earth and funny and irreverent.”
From there, Stern asked what she did next, suggesting that Kennedy was likely ready to take things to the next level. But Shields revealed that she turned him down.
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While the kiss was amazing, Shields knew herself well enough to determine that she couldn’t go any further.
“I froze, though, because it was so precious to me,” Shields explained, telling herself, “‘Oh my god, you’re falling in love, and if you sleep with him, he might not talk to you again, and you can’t handle that.'”
She wasn’t playing games, she said—she just didn’t want to get hurt. “If I slept with him, I would’ve given him my entire universe, my heart, my everything,” Shields said.
As it turns out, her gut didn’t lead her astray.
Once Shields slowed things down, she told Stern she had to take a cab back to where she was staying, laughing and calling it “a little less than chivalrous, in my opinion.”
Stern agreed, adding that Kennedy should’ve gotten in a car with her to ensure she made it home safe. However, Shields said that it wasn’t something he felt he had to do.
“He had women falling at his feet, and he didn’t have to do anything for it,” she said. “I saw him the next day on the slope, and he didn’t look at me, and he didn’t talk to me.”
At that point, she was partly hurt, worrying that she’d done something wrong, but she also felt confident she’d made a good call.
“I was like, ‘Thank God … because he still might not have talked to you, even if you had [slept with him], and you would’ve given something that he wouldn’t have cared about.’ He showed his true colors in that.”
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After the awkwardness the following day, Shields revealed they actually “got stranded” and were snowed in.
“He had to stay in the house my mom was renting,” she said. “So then it was my mom, and John-John, and me in this chalet, and it was just like, this is surreal.”
But even while they were holed up together during a snowstorm, Shields said that Kennedy still refused to talk to her.
“I think I knew enough about myself by then—again, I’d been doing work on myself—to say, ‘You won’t be able to handle this, Brooke,'” she added.