Brooke Shields, 58, reveals how simple conversation with her daughter about her SHOPPING habits helped her to face up to childhood trauma - and the 'shameful' behavior she unknowingly adopted from her 'alcoholic' mother

Brooke Shields has opened up about how a simple conversation with her daughter opened her eyes to her own childhood trauma.

The former supermodel, now 58, has been very outspoken over the years about her troublesome upbringing, previously slamming her alcoholic mother, Teri, for allowing her to pose naked at age 10 and play a child prostitute when she was only 11.

Now, the actress has revealed how the impacts of those experiences still affect her even now as an adult - and how one of her daughters forced her to face her problems head on recently.

Brooke spoke out about it in an upcoming episode of Oprah Winfrey's The Life You Want class, which will premiere today at 4pm.

According to an exclusive clip obtained by the Today show, the star explained how when she was little, her mom had the attitude that buying 10 cheap sweaters was better than purchasing one 'good' one.

And now, Brooke admitted that she takes the opposite approach, usually investing in some of the best pieces of clothing.

But instead of wearing her designer goods, she said she obsessively stores them away to ensure that they stay in mint condition.

And it wasn't until one of her daughters pointed out that she was doing it that she finally realized the habit stemmed from the complicated relationship she had with her mother. 

Brooke, who shares two daughters, named Rowan Francis Henchy, 20, and Grier Hammond Henchy, 17, with her husband, Chris Henchy, explained on the show, 'Anytime I got something "nice," I put it away. I don't wear it. I don't use it.'

She didn't share which of her two kids called her out on it, but she recalled one of her daughters looking through her closet recently and noticing 'dust on everything.'

'You work hard for your money, Mom. Use them. 'Cause if you're not going to wear this stuff, I'm gonna wear it,' she remembered her daughter saying to her. 

'And you're gonna die. Well, I hope not soon, but...' her daughter added before trailing off.

Brooke said she told her daughter she she's still 'trying to understand her past and her attachment to things.' 

'But then [if] I don't use them, I don't enjoy them. So what am I saving them for?' she pondered.

'I honestly have no idea. By the time I get around to it again, either I don't fit into it or it's out of fashion.'

She recalled her daughter reminding her, 'You're Brooke Shields' - something that particularly bothered her because she said she worked hard to be a 'down-to-earth mom' around her daughters, and not a famous supermodel.

'She wants me to enjoy it more. It was such an interesting moment for me because I don't live in my bigness,' she told Oprah. 

'To me, to take up space in a room, I'm a female, famous, pretty, all those things. You don't realize that over time, that starts to become your M.O.'

Brooke said she spoke about the incident with her therapist, who told her her tendency to not wear her stuff most likely developed due to her mom's approach to spending when she was little.

She added as she held back tears that she was still 'partially ashamed of her behavior' and sometimes 'feels angry at herself' for not using her clothes - but that she still thinks she's come a long way.

'I don't know if I could have gotten here before my 50s,' she concluded. 

In a trailer for the Oprah sit-down, the talk show host described Teri as one of 'the first momagers.'

'The two of us together, we took on the world,' Brooke responded, but added, 'You either spend your entire life running away from or running towards your mother. It's hard loving an alcoholic.'

When asked 'how it showed up in your adult life,' the catwalk queen explained, 'You're constantly vigilant and wanting to make everyone fine and everyone happy and yet you're always waiting for the ball to drop.'

Brooke started modeling when she was just 11 months old when she appeared in an ad for the brand Ivory Soap.

She went on to become one of the most successful child models of all time, starring in a slew of campaigns for enormous companies like Gerber, Calvin Klein, and Vogue - and she soon expanded her career by stepping into the world of acting.

But the actress famously posed nude for Playboy when she was only 10 years old, and starred as a child prostitute in the 1978 movie Pretty Baby when she was 11.

While filming the flick, Brooke was forced to kiss her costar, Keith Carradine, then 27.

She spoke out against her mother - who was a model and actress herself and served as Brooke's manager for many years - for allowing her to be exposed to so much at a young age and for not helping her when she was put in inappropriate situations last year in the Hulu documentary about her life, entitled Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields.

Her daughters, Rowan and Grier, also revealed that they had refused to watch the controversial film during the doc.

'It's child pornography,' Rowan said to Brooke before she asked her: 'Would you have let us [do that] at the age of 11?' to which Brooke responded: 'No.' 

While chatting with The Sunday Times about it, the star said it was 'hard for her' to have the conversation with her daughters, and that she had to remind herself 'not to justify her mother to them.'

'I mean, I could say, "Oh, it was the time back then," or, "Oh, it was art," but I don't know why she thought it was all right. I don't know,' she added.

'I had to contend with so much at such an early age, and there was resilience, but also I put on blinders as a defense mechanism. But now I can look at that little girl and think, "She did it, she pulled through."'

She added that she is not 'angry' with her mother, but instead, she feels 'sad' for her. Teri passed away in 2012 aged 79 from an illness related to dementia.

In her 2014 memoir, There Was A Little Girl: The Real Story Of My Mother And Me, Brooke spoke further about her relationship with Teri, who became an alcoholic when the star was just an infant after her father, Frank, left them.

In the book, Brooke explained that because her mom was the only person she had, their bond became 'so intense.'

'I thought she was God, I thought she could change the weather. It was us against the world,' she wrote.

'It's so innate when you're an only child of a single mother,' she added to The Times. 'All you want to do is love your parent and keep them alive forever, and so I wanted to protect her.

'And by virtue of protecting her, I was justifying everything, and that solidified that bond between us.'

However, she told Porter Edit in 2018 that when her mother got drunk, she would lash out at Brooke and even body shame her.

'My mother would get drunk and say: "Why don't you move your fat a**?" So, I've always believed I had a fat a**,' she recalled.

Brooke also told The Guardian in 2021 that looking back, it's clear now that her mother had her get into modeling because she needed to 'pay the bills' - but added that she didn't feel the 'responsibility' of it back then.

'She had this baby that looked this way, and that's how we survived. My looking a certain way paid the bills,' she explained.

'I just loved the approval, I loved working and I loved being on a set. We had fun, we traveled everywhere.

'So it wasn't as if I felt the responsibility as much as: "Oh my God, we get to get a car. Or, we bought a house. We bought another house." It felt like, if I do this, we get this. That's the way it went for decades.'