Brooke Shields provides more details about his public feud with her Tom Cruise — and why he wrote that 2005 op-ed.
“If Tom had thrown me in public before I became a mother, I probably would have kept quiet. I was ignoring his insults. “I was content to sit back while this very famous man hijacked my information to further his (deluded) agenda,” Shields, 59, wrote in his latest letter, Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Age: Thoughts on Aging as a Woman. “I would be satisfied that his behavior would speak for itself.”
Cruise’s 2005 comments came shortly after Shields turned 40. He explained in a letter – released on Tuesday, January 14 – how this changed his perspective.
“Staying quiet and allowing myself to be attacked might have been my way ten years ago – I might have even regretted sharing my story or felt insecure that maybe my career was taken aback when a powerful movie star outed me, I’m sure I never stood a chance in that fight – but now I was strengthened by life experience, ” Shields wrote, adding that he was “growing in my confidence.”
With little history, Shields freed him It’s raining memoir in May 2005, detailing her experience with postpartum depression after welcoming daughter Rowan, now 21. (With Rowan, Shields and husband Chris Henchy (and shares 18-year-old daughter Grier.)
Brooke Shields is a successful actress, model and writer, but her favorite gig is motherhood. The Suddenly Susan alum shares daughters Rowan (born May 2003) and Grier (born April 2006) with husband Chris Henchy, whom she married in 2001. […]
After being released, Cruise continued to play Today show also “humiliated me,” Shields wrote. Cruise, he recalls, referred to his “use of antidepressants” as “dangerous.”
He wrote: “According to Tom, I was spreading lies. “An interesting idea, coming from someone who doesn’t have ovaries.”
In response, Shields published an op-ed in The New York Times.
“I was standing up for myself, and for the women who were suffering, against the absurd and dangerous rhetoric of an uneducated actor who spoke in such a deep way,” Shields wrote in Brooke Shields Not Allowed to Get Old, noting that while the op-ed “caused outrage” at Cruise, and “sparked conversations about the truth and the prevalence of postpartum depression.”
Brooke Shields, Tom Cruise.
Getty Images(2)Shields confirmed in her letter that Cruise “eventually” apologized for starting the feud, though “not publicly.” Per Shields, the actor went to his house and they had a conversation.
“It wasn’t the best apology in the world, but it was what he could do, I accepted,” he wrote.
Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed To Get Old it’s out now.