Brooke Shields has recently opened up about how she blamed herself for a sexual assault incident that happened thirty years ago.
Speaking to PEOPLE in a new interview about her upcoming documentary titled Brooke Shields: Pretty Baby, the 57-year-old revealed that it took her "a long time" to process what had happened to her in her early years.
"Doing the documentary, you see it all together, and it's a miracle that I survived," the actress said in this week's feature.
"It's taken me a long time to process it. I'm more angry now than I was able to be then. If you're afraid, you're rightfully so. They are scary situations. They don't have to be violent to be scary."
Shields was in her 20s during the "lowest point of [her] career" when the horrifying ordeal occurred.
She spoke about how she had just finished having dinner with a Hollywood executive, hoping she was going to get a role in a movie at the end of it. However, he instead got her to call a cab to his hotel room where she was assaulted.
"I didn't fight," as she recounts in the documentary. "I just froze."
Things got worse as the actress started blaming herself for what had happened, focusing on all the little details from that night.
"I kept saying, 'I shouldn't have done that. Why did I go up with him? I shouldn't have had that drink at dinner.'"
She continued: "It was really easy to disassociate because by then it was old hat," she recalls. "And because it was a fight-or-flight type of choice. Fight was not an option, so you just leave your body. 'You're not there. It didn't happen.'"
In order to overcome the memory, she learned how to disassociate.
"I'd always had a sense of disassociation from my body. From my sexuality," she says. "I was mostly a cover girl, so it's all here," Shields adds, indicating from her neck up, "And it was just easier to shut myself off. I was good at it."
Gavin de Becker, a security consultant and long-time friend of Shields, was the only other person to know about the incident at the time.
"Brooke lived so long in the judgment of others, by the millions, so it was heartbreaking to see her judge herself," he told the outlet. "It has also been inspiring to see her integrate the truth as she has."
Now, she's sharing her experience "with the hopes of helping people not feel alone."
"Everybody processes their own trauma on a different timeline. I want to be an advocate for women to be able to speak their truth," the 57-year-old added.
"I always kept going, like a bull in a china shop... I will not be defeated."
The news comes ahead of her two-part documentary which is set to premiere on Hulu in early April.
Lana Wilson, the director of Brooke Shields: Pretty Baby, spoke of the project, emphasizing that she witnessed a change in the actress as they put this piece together.
"I saw someone who gradually gained agency over her own life," Wilson said. "Brooke was open, game for anything, fearless. The only concern she voiced at that first meeting was that this wouldn't be deep enough."
"Nothing scares her," she added. "If something is intimidating or challenging or risky, that means she's going to want to do it even more."
Brooke Shields: Pretty Baby will be available to watch on April 3 on Hulu.
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