All About Brooke Shields’ Late Parents, Teri and Frank Shields

Meet Brooke Shields’ parents.

The actress and model was born to Teri and Frank Shields in Manhattan, New York on May 31, 1965.

Although her parents separated when she was just a few months old, Brooke shared a close but different bond with each.

Brooke spent most of her childhood in the care of her mum Teri, who worked as Brooke’s manager when she was 11 months old – a relationship she explored in her two-part documentary, Beautiful baby: Brooke Shieldswhich premiered on Hulu in April 2023 and on ABC in January 2024.

The documentary looks back at Brooke’s early career as a child model and the impact of acting in Louis Malle’s film Beautiful baby at the age of 12, followed by Blue Lagoon and Endless loveas well as becoming the face of Calvin Klein jeans in the 1980s.

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“It made me look at the kind of person I am and give myself some credit,” Shields said The Sunday Times recording of the documentary. “I had to deal with so much at such an early age, and there was resilience, but I also put shades on as a defense mechanism. But now I can look at that little girl and think, ‘She made it, she pulled through.'”

Despite how critics have often viewed Teri’s complicated relationship with her daughter, Brooke has always said that their relationship is much deeper than many can understand. As she said in a statement after her mother’s death in 2012, “My mother was a huge part of my life and who I am today.”

“I loved her, laughed with her and respected her,” she said at the time. “And even though she had her problems, she was my mom.” Terri died at the age of 79 after a long illness with dementia. Her father Frank died in 2003 of prostate cancer.

Here’s everything you need to know about Brooke’s late parents and what she had to say about them.

They were not married long

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Teri — born Theresa Anna Lillian Schmon — was born in Newark, New Jersey, in August 1933. Before Brooke (her only child) was born, she worked at various jobs. She was a hairdresser, make-up artist for Lord & Taylor and a model in her own right.

In 1964, Teri married Frank Shields Jr. (son of the top ranked tennis player, Frank Shields Sr.). He was a businessman who worked in marketing and sales for Revlon and Estee Lauder in New York. He also founded his own real estate firm, Frank Shields Associates, in Palm Beach, Florida in 1989.

Frank and Teri’s marriage was short-lived, breaking up shortly after Brooke was born in 1965. The couple divorced in 1966 when their daughter was five months old. While the young actress was primarily raised by her mother, she often visited her father and stepmother (and maintains a close relationship with her three half-sisters and two half-siblings from her stepmother’s previous marriage).

During the appearance at 2023 The Drew Barrymore ShowBrooke told host Drew Barrymore that her mom didn’t date after her divorce from Frank “because she was in love with me.”

“I was her main focus and we would both be cut off from our sexuality,” she said. “I was going to stay a virgin, she was just supposed to be Teri Terrific and be there. So it’s like… it’s so layered, and it’s so necessary and it’s so sad and broken.”

Teri managed Brooke’s career

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Brooke’s career in the entertainment industry began when Teri booked her daughter’s first modeling gig at the age of 11 months for an Ivory Soap commercial, which opened the door to other commercials for brands such as Band-Aid and Colgate. At the age of 12, Brooke landed her first major acting job – a role that not only launched her acting career, but quickly turned her into a pop culture phenomenon.

In 1978, Brooke played a child prostitute in Louis Malle’s film Beautiful baby — a role that sparked outrage and countless headlines. From there, she got a role in the 1980s Blue Lagoon (when she was 15) and Franco Zeffirelli Endless love in 1981.

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“There will never be another movie made like that,” Shields said Blue Lagoon during an interview with iHeartRadio. – It wouldn’t be allowed. (Brooke was a young teenager in the aforementioned films, both of which contained sexual content, nudity and a significant age gap between the leads).

Teri — who managed Brooke’s career until the actress was in her 20s — was occasionally accused of exploiting her child and taking advantage of her daughter’s striking looks.

“They see complete innocence, which is complete,” Teri told television interviewer Bill Boggs, with Brooke sitting next to her. “And secondly, they have a sexy child, they have a sexy person – they like that.”

Teri and Brooke’s relationship had its ups and downs

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Despite public opinion of Teri’s role as a “momager” during her daughter’s childhood, Brooke felt protective of her mom and defended her actions. “It’s innate when you’re an only child of a single mother,” Brooke said The Sunday Times in an interview from March 2023.

“All you want is to love your parents and keep them alive forever, so I wanted to protect her,” she said of their mother-daughter relationship. “And thanks to protecting her, I justified everything, and that cemented that bond between us.”

As Teri grew up, the young actress saw her mother struggle with alcohol. After Teri’s death in 2012, Brooke wrote a book about her relationship with her mom — in part because she was “so horrified by the critical obituaries,” The Sunday Times noted.

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Addressed She Was a Girl: The True Story of My Mother and Methe memoir was published in 2014 and shares the story of Teri’s long struggle with alcohol and her daughter’s long-term desire to quit smoking.

“You never recover from losing a parent,” Shields said Diversity Studio at Sundance in January 2023 “It’s a primal thing. You learn to put it second in your heart. I also said goodbye to her every time she drank.”

The actress added: “She wasn’t there. I knew who she was capable of being because it was in there… I’m sad that she’s missing out on this. She’s probably looking down saying, ‘I didn’t get enough screen time.’

Frank served Brooke as an escape

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Although Brooke spent most of her childhood with her mother, she maintained a strong bond with her father.

Running a typical household with regular rules and scheduled mealtimes, Frank was unfazed by his daughter’s fame — he rarely mentioned her or shared his opposing view of the decisions his ex-wife made regarding their daughter’s career.

“My dad was absolutely in denial about it,” Brooke told the paper about her meteoric rise to fame as a teenager. “And that made me insist that I turn out OK, so that he would be proud of me.” (Brooke was a diligent student throughout high school and graduated from Princeton University in 1987.)

Frank remarried after divorcing Teri

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Teri was Frank’s first marriage, but he remarried after they divorced in 1966, marrying Diana “Didi” Lippert in 1970.

Together they had three children, daughters Marina, Olympia and Christina. Frank was also the stepfather of Diana Auchincloss Cunningham and Thomas Gore Auchincloss, from Diana’s previous marriage.

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Although he was born in New York and spent most of his life there, Frank eventually moved to Florida. Crew sports were a major part of his life, as he was captain of the University of Pennsylvania heavyweight crew.

In 1980, he founded Power Ten New York, an organization dedicated to supporting the sport of rowing. The Frank Shields Scholarship was established in 2003 by the National Rowing Foundation in honor of Brooke’s late father.

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Source: HIS Education