Timeless

Brooke Shields is 52 (52!) and has never looked—or felt—better. We got her to share her secrets (hint: it’s all about balance).

- Alison Prato

On a fall afternoon, Brooke Shields pops out of a black SUV, kissing her younger daughter, Grier, goodbye. As Grier continues on to her after-school activity, Brooke—N.Y.C.-mom chic in a T-shirt, buttery leather jacket, jeans (Calvins, of course), and black flats—settles into the back table of a fairly empty West Village café.

“This is so bad, but I haven’t really eaten anything today. I’ve just been running around,” she says, ordering a Cobb salad and an iced green tea. “I’m so tired lately, and I haven’t had any coffee. I stopped drinking it when I went to the Ranch in Malibu with a girlfriend, and just recently, I’m starting to want that jolt again.” And really, who can’t relate to needing a little extra juice?

True, Brooke has been famous her entire life (she appeared in an Ivory soap ad when she was 11 months old). And she has a résumé that would eat up all the pages in this magazine—highlights include movies (The Blue Lagoon), TV (Suddenly Susan, Lipstick Jungle, and a recent recurring role on Law & Order: SVU), Broadway (Wonderful Town), and books (her postpartum depression memoir, Down Came the Rain, and her autobiography, There Was a Little Girl). But these days, she’s also just a busy working mom trying to juggle all the balls.

What does it feel like to age so publicly, when your face and body have been on display since you were a preteen?

What’s odd is that it used to just primarily be my face, and the emphasis was never really on my body. I always had body doubles in movies, so I didn’t have any stress, because I knew I was gonna get some gorgeous looking body to be my double. Since I’ve turned 50, there’s been more focus on my body than ever.