Brooke Shields Book Bombshells: Tom Cruise, Bradley Cooper and More

Brooke Shields was initially reluctant to speak out about postpartum depression.

"My biggest fear at the time was becoming a sob story—boohoo, poor Brooke Shields," she wrote in her 2025 memoir Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old, noting that at one point she even wondered if her sadness after having daughter Rowan Henchy in 2003 was "punishment for decades of good fortune."

Ultimately the possibility that she might help other women feel less alone won out.

So when Tom Cruise—in an infamous June 2005 Today appearance—criticized her for saying she'd found antidepressants helpful, Shields was "gobsmacked."

When she was younger she probably wouldn't have stood up for herself, she admitted in the book. But she had just turned 40, she continued, and "instead of letting myself turn into a punching bag, I swung back." She wrote a New York Times op-Ed (against her soon-to-be fired publicist's advice not to dignify his comments with a response) calling Cruise out for his "ridiculous rant" about a condition he would never experience.

Cruise later came to her house to apologize, Shields told Jay Leno on The Tonight Show in September 2006. The actor's rep confirmed at the time that he'd made up with Shields, but said the Mission: Impossible star had "not changed his position about antidepressants."

Shields, who attended Cruise and Katie Holmes' wedding that November, wrote in her book that it "wasn't the world's best apology, but it’s what he was capable of, and I accepted it."

Incidentally, Shields' second child, Grier Henchy, shares her April 18, 2006, birthday with Suri Cruise, and they were born in the same Santa Monica, Calif., hospital.

Shields couldn't help but notice the mob of news vans and paparazzi outside, she wrote, and "imagine my embarrassment when a nurse whispered that the fuss outside was not, in fact, for me but for Tom and Katie and their freshly birthed baby girl."

In 2014, Shields signed a 16-movie deal with Hallmark Channel, but after only three Flower-Shop Mystery films, she was compelled to "renegotiate."

She wrote in her book that she'd been hired to bring a comedic spark to the network but "all the humor had evaporated" from the mystery series.

Walking away from a deal that didn't suit her was also something she never would have done in her 20s, Shields wrote, the confidence that allowed her pull the plug having come with age.

Her mom Teri Shields used to tell her that work was work, and "'nothing is beneath you,'" Shields recalled, but "there’s something to be said for earning the right to be particular and discerning."

Shields has talked before about suffering a grand mal seizure at a New York restaurant in 2023 and waking up to find Bradley Cooper, who lives in her neighborhood, holding her hand. (The hostess called Shields' assistant, who called Cooper's assistant, who called Cooper.)

Cooper even rode with her in the ambulance to the hospital, where, she wrote in the book, "I was informed that not only did I have a grand mal seizure, but I also had peed my pants. (Fun fact: the only thing worse than peeing your pants is being told after the fact that you peed your pants while being held by Bradley Cooper.)"

Shields' seizure was caused by being over-hydrated, the actress having been drinking tons of water ahead of a benefit performance of her cabaret show Previously Owned by Brooke Shields, which threw her sodium levels out of whack.

At the hospital, she wrote, "one of the most frustrating parts of the experience" was when male doctors asked her if she'd been restricting her salt intake and scolded her, "You really shouldn’t limit your salt intake just to lose water weight."

She admittedly hadn't been eating enough, Shields wrote, but that was mainly a loss of appetite "due to nerves."

While she wanted to respond by slapping the doctors in the face "with my peed-in pants," Shields continued, instead she told them, "I'm a fifty-eight-year-old woman. I actually look younger when I’m bloated. Eating salt is like Botox for me. So NO, I have not been limiting my salt intake to look skinnier or lose weight."

Following an abnormal pap smear when she was in her mid-30s, Shields underwent a cone biopsy to remove atypical cells from her cervix.

The procedure was successful, she wrote, but no one told her that she'd been packed with gauze to staunch bleeding and that, once the gauze came out, she'd see some blood.

"I am not exaggerating when I tell you I thought I was hemorrhaging and dying, or else giving birth to something I didn’t even know I was carrying," she wrote. "I felt like my entire uterus had fallen out onto the bathroom floor."

Moreover, Shields continued, she wasn't forewarned that she might have so much scar tissue that it could make it difficult for her to get pregnant.

Sure enough, a subsequent examination found the biopsy had "tightened and shortened" her cervix and when she went for her first round of IVF, the doctors had to go through her belly button instead of her uterine canal to plant the embryo.

Shields got pregnant but miscarried three months later, which she detailed in her 2006 book Down Came the Rain.

Ultimately, Shields noted in her 2025 memoir, a male doctor failed to warn her of the possible consequences of the biopsy, while a female fertility specialist explained that the procedure likely affected her ability to conceive.

She would have still had the biopsy, Shields concluded, but "I would have appreciated having the details so that I could have given informed consent."

Another harrowing experience on Shields' road to realizing that doctors don't always know best and she is her own best advocate for her body:

After Shields was a mother of two, she wrote, she opted to undergo a labial reduction—not for aesthetic purposes, but because she'd dealt with painful labia since high school, joking with her best friend who had the same issue that it was like having "two little speed bags" between their legs.

It was still considered a cosmetic procedure, however, so Shields was referred to a male plastic surgeon in L.A. who was supposed to be the best.

Only after the four-hour operation did the doctor tell her he also took the opportunity to give her "'a little rejuvenation'" down there as well since "'everything is looser'" after giving birth, Shields wrote.

She'd had two C-sections, she told the doctor, but "he acted as if he'd done me a favor." Shields was, in turn, "horrified, but also at a loss," she wrote, recalling that she "drove home in a stupor."

The "bonus procedure" didn't improve her sex life, Shields wrote, but even if she'd been happy with the results she was still angry. She never took legal action, though, and at one point even wondered if perhaps she was misreading the whole situation and was lucky for the freebie.

But fast-forward to now, she wrote, and "my reaction wouldn't be so generous."

In fact, she added, "My sentiment is basically a giant middle finger. F--k that guy!"

Just because Shields is full of perspective and a confidence she did not have in her 20s does not mean she hasn't tried all sorts of aesthetic tricks to defy age.

Learned from using kinesiology tape as a dancer, she wrote: "When I have a movie to promote or a modeling job on the horizon, I’ve found myself taping my thighs to my Spanx—literally pulling my skin up from my knees and adhering it to my shapewear for an immediate (and surgery-free!) lift."

And, she detailed, maybe one day she'll embrace the gray, but for now the brunette gets her roots touched up. 

Shields also gets fraxels, laser treatments to help even out skin tone, and admittedly prefers to look "pulled together" when out and about, JIC there are paparazzi around.

Despite being anointed a beauty at an early age and becoming a world-famous face of Calvin Klein, Shields was told in no uncertain terms what separated her from the supermodels of the world.

"I was very specifically told I was not runway worthy," she wrote, "because I wasn’t skinny enough."

And being told she didn't have the "right body" became a state of mind.

"From the neck up, I was Brooke Shields," she wrote, "but it was like my body existed in a different reality. That feeling stays with you, no matter who you are."

Shields married Andre Agassi in 1997 after several years of dating, but they divorced in 1999.

When she confessed her insecurities and asked him if he'd still love her when she was big and fat, Shields wrote, noting that she meant once she got pregnant, his response was, "I love you too much to let you get big and fat!"

Which was not the response she was looking for, she admitted, "But we all know how that relationship turned out, so let’s move on."

Agassi described various ways in which he and Shields were not the right match in his 2009 memoir Open. As part of her "rigorous premarital training regimen" before they got married, the tennis champ wrote, she stuck a photo of Steffi Graf on the fridge for motivation. (Agassi and Graf have been married since 2001.)

Shields recalled getting her first hot flash in April 2016 on the Savannah, Ga., set of Daisy Winters, one so aggressive they had to pause filming because "the makeup artist couldn’t mop me down fast enough."

A compress of ice water and Sea Breeze astringent applied to her neck did the trick so they could resume, Shields wrote, but she "couldn't stop apologizing."

She was almost 51 at the time, but admittedly was startled to find out she was in perimenopause.

"It just wasn’t on my radar," she wrote, "which is maybe strange but, I’ve also learned, entirely common."

A year or two later, Shields' doctor prescribed her estrogen and progesterone to help ward off some of the more severe side effects of menopause.

And while she noted that a course of treatment is a personal decision to be made with one's doctor, Shields' found her low-dose regimen "incredibly helpful" and still takes hormones to this day.

So she waited for the right moment on set and ran toward Perry, slid to her knees and pretended to peer up his pant leg.

Beset by last-minute panic, wondering where she got the gall to do such a thing, she was relieved when Perry cracked up.

Brooke met husband Chris Henchy in the gym on the Warner Bros. lot in 1999, when she was starring on the NBC sitcom Suddenly Susan—and still married to Agassi, according to her book.

But she didn't start dating the writer-producer until the following year, after she was divorced and in the throes of a number of personal crises, she wrote. Henchy swooped in and she liked his "knight-in-shining-armor approach."

Shields admitted that, when she and Henchy first got together, she envisioned them becoming a Hollywood power couple who'd churn out projects together.

Eventually, however, she realized there was enough work out there for the both of them, separately.

"I knew I wasn’t being fair, and I was putting too much pressure on him and our relationship," Shields wrote. "Ultimately, I told him that unless he wrote a part specifically for me, I had to be taken off the consideration list, because I couldn’t audition for him."

Being rejected by a room of creatives that included her husband would be too hard on her ego, she wrote.

Ultimately, letting their family take center stage was one of the secrets of their enduring marriage. And now that their kids are older, the priority has been on refocusing on what made them fall in love in the first place and making that work.