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Brooke Shields may be celebrated for her decades-long career as an entertainer (and her eyebrows), but the thing that sets her apart the most has nothing to do with her jobs or looks—it’s her unflappable track record for telling the truth. Think back to when she was procreating: Where many women in the public eye openly talked about experiencing a life force of power in this phase, Shields was one of the first women to talk publicly about postpartum depression. Cut to today, and the actor and newfound hair care entrepreneur still leads with honesty: For her, a surge of personal, professional, and creative power has culminated at age 60.
“At this age, I’m finding there’s this life force that I feel like I’ve never had before,” she says. “I used to cover up. I used to want to be smaller. I apologized—like a lot of women, I’d say ‘I’m sorry’ instead of ‘excuse me’. That type of oppression is part of what made me likable. It made me successful because I wasn’t ‘difficult’.”
Being agreeable helped yield professional success in modeling (Ivory Soap, Calvin Klein); film (Pretty Baby, The Blue Lagoon); television (Suddenly Susan, Lipstick Jungle, Jane the Virgin); and Broadway (Chicago, Grease, The Addams Family). But it didn’t exactly cultivate impenetrable confidence or self-compassion. “I think I’ve spent so many decades thinking ‘if I was only a size six’ or ‘if I don’t have a little gold statue, that means I’m not talented’—all those dumb expectations that you allow yourself to have put on you,” she says.
But it’s through the launch of her hair care company, Commence, that Shields has cast aside residual self-doubt and come into a new era. “It took starting this company to help stop with the what-ifs: ‘what if I make mistakes? What if I can’t raise the money?’ I just stopped because no one was telling me this—I was telling it to myself,” she says. “To be now, 60 years old, and to own a company, do the research, go into the lab, and ask for what I need and want—It’s so nice. I feel like I’m just beginning.”
What’s more, Shields says stepping into her power as a businesswoman has impacted her role as Actors’ Equity Association president and her approach to acting, too. When filming aside heavy hitters like Glenn Close in Ryan Murphy’s upcoming series All’s Fair (set to premiere this fall on Hulu), the comedy veteran says she released any doubt surrounding her ability to deliver a dramatic performance and “brought it,” she says. “To be in this era of my life, I have more to give.”
Brooke Shields is most certainly giv-ing (to borrow a term coined by internet gays). With the launch of sell-out hair care products, as author of the 2025 memoir Brooke Shields is Not Allowed to Get Old, as executive producer of upcoming television and films (including the forthcoming Quarter), as a union leader, and more, Shields and her life force are only growing stronger.
Scroll through below to check out a few things that help keep Brooke locked in and flourishing.
