58 AMERICANWAY
OCTOBER 1 2008
B R O O K E S H I E L D S
paper, but youneed tohave something else
[
beyondparenting
]
. Iwouldn’twant to just
be awife either, and I really donotwant to
be justanactor.Yet inourculture,weare so
afraid toadmit all these things.”
Shields speaks honestly, in a way that
many stars (and their protective publicists)
donot. There are no soundbites inher an-
swers, no hesitations indicating that she’s
weighing whether what is coming out of
her mouth is politically incorrect. In fact,
somewhere in the middle of our conversa-
tion, I forget entirely that I’m interviewing
BrookeShields.
Her relatability is probably a big reason
she’smanaged to stick around in an indus-
try that notoriously eats its young. It’s also
a big reason women hailed her as a hero
when she spoke candidly about her expe-
rience with postpartum depression in her
2005 memoir,
Down Came the Rain: My
Journey through Postpartum Depression
.
Shields baredher emotional all after giving
birth to Rowan. But her candor about the
condition and her subsequent use of pre-
scriptionmedication led to a skirmishwith
Theshow follows threesuccessfulwomen
whose lives are shifting beneath them and
whoare thusconstantly forced toreevaluate
how they define success— something that
Shields, with her ups and downs, can cer-
tainly empathize with. “We all go through
stages when we try to say, ‘Okay, I am not
going to do somuch of that or somuch of
this.’ …And invariably, you come up short
or youaredisappointed,” she says. “Wehave
this false perception that we accept: that
women can do it all. And, yes, we need to
acknowledge our capabilities. That is really
important.” After pausing for a moment,
she says, “But then, let us also talk about
howeverythingcomeswithaprice.Doing it
all comeswithaprice.Nothing isevergoing
tobe that visionof perfection.”
I ask her how motherhood plays into
her career— if she feels, like somany other
workingmomsdo, that her timeaway from
the kids provides both a dose of sanity and
a touch of guilt. “I amnot as nice as a full-
timemom,” she says. “I am reallynot. I lose
my patience; I drinkmore
[
laughs
]
.We all
need toadmit this. Itmight lookhorribleon
When I ask her if she feels like she’s de-
fied the laws of Hollywood by refusing to
bewrittenoff or pigeonholed, shepauses to
consider that. “It actually isn’t surprising,
because I have always looked to the posi-
tives of the future,” she says. “The truth is
that I have never writtenmyself off, and I
think that is the most important piece of
thewholepuzzle. Inever allowmyself tobe
stopped.”
Herheadstrongdetermination is justone
of several qualities that she shareswithher
Lipstick Jungle
character, Wendy Healy, a
top-of-the-packmovie-studio executive. In
the first season, viewers watched Wendy
strugglewith thedelicatebalancingact that
so many women, Shields included, engage
in: juggling children and career, ambition
and self-doubt,marriageand friendship.
“When I read the actual hard copy of the
book,I just immediately identifiedwithher,”
Shields says of her character. “I appreciated
her strength and also the dilemma that she
never really thinks she is good enough at
any of it. Yet she is just so smart that she
kindof still keeps going.”
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