Brooke Shields has a brand new workplace. It’s empty, and he or she hasn’t found out how she desires to furnish it, and even how usually she’ll be there, but it surely’s an indication of her new and surprising standing, as president of Actors’ Equity Association, the labor union representing theater actors and stage managers within the United States.
Shields’s candidacy was a shock, even to herself. But when Kate Shindle, who had led the union for 9 years, introduced in April that she was stepping down, Shields’s music director steered she contemplate the opening, and shortly sufficient, she had tossed her hat within the ring, and in May she gained the vote by members, defeating two more-seasoned labor activists. She’s already led her first assembly of the union’s council, and got here away realizing she has quite a bit to be taught, beginning with parliamentary process.
Shields, in fact, is a kind of individuals who has been well-known for thus lengthy, and in so some ways, that even she will be able to’t keep in mind a distinct time. She was a childhood mannequin, a preteen film star, a intercourse object and an icon of magnificence, all earlier than she went off to varsity (Princeton, thanks very a lot). In the years since, she has acted onscreen and onstage, has written books, has spoken broadly, significantly about despair, and has change into a logo and a topic for an evolving dialogue about how girls and women have been sexualized by the leisure and style industries.
She has had 5 roles on Broadway, every time changing a principal in an already-running present (“Grease,” “Chicago,” “Cabaret,” “Wonderful Town” and “The Addams Family”). She has additionally carried out often at regional theaters (“The Exorcist” on the Geffen in Los Angeles, for instance) and Off Broadway (within the star automobiles “Love Letters,” “The Vagina Monologues,” and “Love, Loss, and What I Wore,” amongst others).
Now, at 59, she is considering quite a bit about center age. She is recovering from a foot surgical procedure that attracted consideration when she wore Crocs (yellow, matching her gown) to the Tony Awards. She has simply began a brand new magnificence enterprise, Commence, with hair-care merchandise developed for girls over 40; she is writing one other e book, additionally aging-focused; and he or she is in search of new methods to harness the superstar she will be able to by no means shed. That’s the place Equity is available in — she says actors and stage managers have been terribly supportive of her when she wanted to leap shortly into an unfamiliar present. Now she desires to provide again.
Over lunch at B’artusi, an Italian restaurant within the West Village, she talked about her time in theater, and her crash course as a labor chief. These are edited excerpts from the dialog.
How’s the foot?
It’s each toes. It’s going to be OK. This is my sixth surgical procedure. I actually blew my toes out on Broadway, from dancing in reveals — being thrown in, with no coaching and raked levels and jamming my toes into the footwear and abusing them. I’m positive it’s hereditary too — it’s in all probability yet one more factor I can blame my mom for.
You simply began an organization, you’re performing, and the Equity presidency doesn’t pay. Why add this place to the combo?
There’s one thing that I grapple with and have struggled with my complete life: being a public persona. You have this factor it’s a must to dwell with, and it’s fixed. So how do I flip it into one thing I don’t resent? How do I take advantage of Brooke Shields — that factor that’s separate from me, that’s a job, and is a commodity of some kind — to make a distinction for a group that’s given nothing however love and acceptance to me when it was not cool to forged anyone who had zero Broadway coaching? My expertise with Broadway, and regional theater, and Off Broadway, is that this welcoming group. Those are the folks that had my again.
Union activism is new for you.
This goes to be an enormous studying curve for me. My first time chairing a gathering was one thing out of Monty Python. I hadn’t realized the vernacular. Robert’s Rules? I’ll get to know them! But if that’s my weakest place, then I’m OK, ’trigger I can be taught it, or somebody who can do it higher can do it and I can sit proper by them.
You don’t like battle?
That’s going to be laborious for me. In this stage of my life, I’m letting go of the tug of struggle rope. I don’t wish to combat; I like to debate.
But you’ve taken a job the place you’re going to must ask producers for issues they don’t need to give. It’s adversarial.
I’m prepared. I’ve needed to do it in my firm — letting individuals go, saying no. That’s a ability to apply and be taught.
The union simply introduced a strike towards developmental work, saying negotiations weren’t making progress. What’s the difficulty?
People aren’t being compensated pretty.
Also, Disney’s theme park performers simply voted to unionize with Equity.
We have to determine what they need of their contracts, after which we have now to place ahead individuals who could be good in that negotiation.
What’s your sense of how theater is doing?
It’s not absolutely recovered, clearly, from the pandemic. But it’s actually nice to see what number of new reveals there have been. There’s one thing for everyone. You can have a “Merrily” and a “Stereophonic” and an “Illinoise” and “Appropriate” and “Mother Play.” It’s refreshing that it’s not one be aware.
Something I usually hear from readers is that they marvel why there can’t be extra streaming of staged reveals.
That’s a tough one. The a part of theater that’s theater is being in particular person. There’s a distinct efficiency each evening.
What’s the primary present you keep in mind seeing?
My mother took me to “The Fantasticks” after which Mummenschanz. Those have been the large ones. And then it was “Jesus Christ Superstar.” I used to be 9 after I noticed “Grease” on Broadway and throughout the preshow there was a hula hoop contest and the winner of the hula hoop contest would get to fulfill the forged. By the grace of one thing, I ended up profitable it. And my mother, from that day on, each time I had a second of doubt, she would say, “Remember the hula hoop.”
And when was the primary time you carried out onstage?
I used to be in a single scene in “After the Fall” [a 1974 teleplay]. I stroll on, I’m going sit on Christopher Plummer’s lap, after which I stroll off. I used to be like 8.
You have been at all times doing movie and business work. Did you do theater at school?
I did each Triangle Show [The Princeton Triangle Club is a musical comedy troupe] in school. I attempted out for the dance firm, and I didn’t get in my freshman 12 months. That summer season I took 4 or 5 dance courses a day. I went again and bought into the dance firm.
Are you going to proceed to behave whereas main the union?
As lengthy as I’m needed. I’ve bought a few issues proper now that I’m engaged on. Netflix did rather well with the last movie that I did. I’ve a present in improvement. What can be very best is to be on a present right here in New York as a result of then I may do all of it. And by no means sleep.
What would you like your legacy to be?
I hope I’m in a position to carry by most of the little modifications that may make a much bigger distinction, and that I depart the affiliation feeling kinder and extra inclusive and never indignant or fractured.
