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It has been nearly two decades since Tom Cruise used his appearance on Today to criticize Brooke Shields for taking antidepressants while battling postpartum depression. The unhinged 2005 rant accused the actress of being “irresponsible” and claimed that the medication “didn’t cure anything.” When Cruise apologized a year later, Shields described the apology as “heartfelt.” Reflecting on it now, she acknowledges that it could have been better, but she chose to meet him where he was.
“It wasn’t the world’s best apology, but it’s what he was capable of, and I accepted it,” Shields wrote in her newly-published book Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old: Thoughts on Aging as a Woman. What mattered most to her was that she was allowed an opportunity to stand up for herself.
Shields responded at the time with an op-ed in the New York Times titled “War of Words.” “Comments like those made by Tom Cruise are a disservice to mothers everywhere,” she wrote. “To suggest that I was wrong to take drugs to deal with my depression, and that instead I should have taken vitamins and exercised shows an utter lack of understanding about postpartum depression and childbirth in general. If any good can come of Mr. Cruise’s ridiculous rant, let’s hope that it gives much-needed attention to a serious disease.”
In her book, Shields says motherhood is what pushed her to respond to Cruise at all. “Had Tom taken a public swing at me before I became a mother, I probably would have stayed quiet. I would have ignored his ridiculous rant,” she wrote. “I might have been content to sit back while this very famous man hijacked my experience to advance his own (deluded) agenda. I would have been satisfied that his behavior would speak for itself … A decade earlier — I might have even regretted sharing my story or felt insecure that maybe my career was stalling while a powerful male movie star was singling me out, sure that I’d never stand a chance in that fight.”
But in writing the op-ed, Shields reclaimed her power by standing up for herself in the face of “irrational and dangerous comments from an unschooled actor who was speaking way out of his depth.”
During a 2006 appearance on The Tonight Show, Shields told Jay Leno: “He came over to my house, and he gave me a heartfelt apology. And he apologized for bringing me into the whole thing and for everything that happened. And through it all, I was so impressed with how heartfelt it was. And I didn’t feel at any time that I had to defend myself, nor did I feel that he was trying to convince me of anything other than the fact that he was deeply sorry. And I accepted it.”
