Brooke Shields Recalls Scary Fan Incident at Cannes Film Festival

Brooke Shields has shared a frightening memory from the 1978 Cannes Film Festival, where she attended the premiere of her film Pretty Baby at age 12.

Speaking on The Bossticks podcast, Shields said huge crowds gathered around her because of the attention the controversial movie was receiving. She recalled that some fans became so aggressive that one person tried to cut off a piece of her hair with scissors.

"There was such a frenzy about me," Shields said. "They wanted a piece of me."

According to Shields, the situation became so overwhelming that she and her mother considered leaving the film industry and returning to modeling.

In her 2014 memoir, There Was a Little Girl: The Real Story of My Mother and Me, Shields described the Cannes experience as something that "scarred" her. She wrote that the crowd was so large and disorderly that she was nearly trampled.

A family friend, Bob Karsian, helped protect Shields from the crowd and stopped the person who tried to cut her hair. Karsian later said he had to push people away to keep the young actress safe.

Despite the frightening incident, Shields and her family later looked back on it with some humor. However, she said it took her about 20 years before she felt comfortable returning to the Cannes Film Festival.

Pretty Baby, directed by Louis Malle, was released in 1978 and sparked controversy because it included nude scenes featuring the underage actress.