Brooke Shields says she's giving back to the theater as head of Actors' Equity union

Brooke Shields said she had a deeply personal reason for wanting to become president of the 51,000-member Actors’ Equity Association. She said she wanted to push for fair wages and other protections for stage actors and managers. 

But the model, actress, and entrepreneur said she also was paying back a kindness. “Theater was welcoming me when nobody else was welcoming me,” Shields said at a Headliners Luncheon Sept. 12.

Having taken a hiatus from film to attend Princeton University, where she graduated from in 1987 with a degree in Romance Languages, the 23-year-old found she was no longer one of Hollywood’s hottest commodities. While the film industry mostly ignored her, the stage welcomed her with open arms, she said, Shields was hired to replace Rosie O’Donnell on Broadway as Rizzo, the bad girl in Grease, a role she needed to learn in nine days to keep the show running.

“Those are the people that have had my back,” she said. “I felt that I would be remiss if I didn’t use a platform that I know I have to better their lives as they  have bettered mine.”  

Shields takes the helm of the stage actors’ union at a difficult time. The 2018-19 theater season was the highest-grossing and best-attended ever, with record profits as audiences flocked to see shows such as Hamilton and The Lion King. Then the pandemic struck. Theaters closed for 18 months, and some of them never reopened. And while sporting events and concerts have rebounded to pre-pandemic levels, theater attendance still lags. The most recent season is down 17% from before the shutdown.

During her trip to Washington, Shields met with members of Congress to advocate for federal funding for the arts as well as a bill providing tax benefits to her members. A provision allowing actors to deduct their expenses, such as the cost of acting, voice, and dance lessons ,was eliminated by President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans in their 2017 tax law.

Without those deductions, many actors cannot afford the tools they need to pursue their careers, Shields said. As a result, coaches and instructors also, have seen their incomes dry up.

Shields said that live theater helps boost local economies.

“When a person goes to see a live show, they bring on average $39 into the economy" through the purchase of theater tickets, dinner, drinks, babysitting, and commuting expenses, she said.. “We need to acknowledge the economic impact of arts funding. We aren’t talking about the rich people in Hollywood.”

Many of her members work two or three jobs to make ends meet, she said.

In her first month in office, Shields helped negotiate a contract for 1,700 striking Disneyland actors, many of whom said they felt mistreated by management during the pandemic. She mentioned safety concerns such as Peter Pan and Tinkerbell flying through the air on harnesses, actors and stage managers forced to work when sick due to no stand-ins, and the need for higher wages. She is currently navigating a strike demanding that theaters pay workers for shows under development prior to full production; currently, actors and managers participate in such workshops for free. And then there’s the  question of what to do about actor protections from AI.

In addition to her role at Equity, she said she has a new memoir coming out in January — Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old — about women embracing aging, and recently launched her own haircare line, Commence, designed for women over 40.  She blamed her  frenetic activity on being an empty nester as her two daughters,  aged 21 and 18, have left home.

Shields addressed how some of her early films sexualized her in ways that were controversial at the time but are often viewed with horror today. She had nude scenes in Pretty Baby, in which the then-11-year-old played a child prostitute, and in The Blue Lagoon, filmed when she was 15. During filming, Shields said she feared she would be labeled a difficult actor if she protested.

The 2023 documentary Pretty Baby, produced with her permission, explored not only the sexualization of young Shields but also of other girls and young women across the country. Most of her early films, she said, couldn’t even be made today as more protections are in place for young actors.

Shields, who has helped advertise the products of others since her first Ivory Soap ad at the age of 11 months, now finds herself promoting the products of her own hair care company and the rights of her fellow arts workers. She acknowledged she was well out of her comfort zone.

But the world of live stage is worth fighting for, even if she has to learn as she goes, she said.

“Let’s not lose sight of what it means to be in a theater,” she said. “It’s a collective experience, a shared experience to be in the womb of a theater.”