'I Feel More Confident Than I Ever Have'

In an exclusive interview ahead of her latest memoir, actress, model, mom and entrepreneur Brooke Shields tells Us about feeling happier, finding strength and choosing not to care what people think about her

- CARLA SOSENKO

For actresses in their 40s and 50s, Shields writes, "You aren't Bridget Jones but you aren't Miss Daisy, and so you languish."

Brooke Shields has spent a lot of her life being pleasant. As a preteen, she smiled courteously as journalists inquired about whether she felt oversexualized and exploited in films like 1978’s Pretty Baby and her instantly iconic Calvin Klein ads two years later. She was the dutiful daughter to her mother and manager, Teri, whose alcoholism made their close bond indescribably complex. She smiled for the cameras when they followed her to Princeton University in 1985 and asked (as if it were their business) about her being a virgin. Young Brooke Shields was a master of standing out and being sweet.

"There came a day when I was simply tired of judging myself and feeling like I wasn't enough. I was over the angst. I didn't want to be mean to myself anymore." - BROOKE SHIELDS

As she grew up, she continued to shine but used her voice more defiantly — most memorably in a 2005 New York Times op-ed response to Tom Cruise’s attack on her use of antidepressants during postpartum depression after the birth of her first daughter, Rowan. She showed her comedy chops in four seasons of her NBC sitcom, Suddenly Susan, and multiple Broadway shows. She published two New York Times bestselling memoirs.

Then she had the nerve to do something (apparently) unexpected: She kept getting older. Though her confidence and joy grew as she aged — she turns 60 this spring — she writes in her new book,