Brooke Shields opened up for the first time about being sexual assaulted in her new documentary 'Pretty Baby'

• Brooke Shields opened up about being sexually assaulted as a young adult in her new documentary.
• In "Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields," the star said she was assaulted after graduating from Princeton.
• She also talks about how she was sexualized as a child in the film, which premiered on Friday.

Brooke Shields opens up about being a victim of sexual assault and being sexualized as a child actor in her new documentary, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday. 

Shields, 57, publicly shares her experience of sexual assault for the first time in "Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields," Entertainment Weekly reported.

The documentary traces her journey from being sexualized as a young girl in Hollywood to finding agency as a grown woman, according to IMDB. It was directed by Lana Wilson, who was behind Taylor Swift's 2020 "Miss Americana" documentary. 

According to Entertainment Weekly, Shields said the sexual assault happened shortly after she graduated from Princeton University in 1987. At the time, the star was experiencing a lull in her career following her early success as a child actor, appearing in films such as "The Blue Lagoon" and "Pretty Baby."

While not naming the perpetrator, Shields said she had dinner with him before he told her to come back to his hotel so he could call her a taxi. 

"He said, 'come back to the hotel and I'll call a cab'," Shields says in the film. "And I go up to the hotel room, and he disappears for a while."

While waiting for him to return, Shields said she was playing around with some binoculars before he came back into the room naked. "The door opens, the person comes out naked, and I've got the binoculars and I'm like, 's---,'" she said. "And I put the binoculars down and he's right on me. Just like, was wrestling."

"I was afraid I'd get choked out or something," Shields added. "So I didn't fight that much. I didn't. I just absolutely froze. I thought one 'no' should've been enough, and I just thought, 'stay alive and get out,' and I just shut it out. God knows I knew how to be disassociated from my body. I'd practiced that ... I went down in the elevator, and I got my own cab. I just cried all the way to my friend's apartment."

In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Shields said she didn't know when or if she'd ever be in a place to speak publicly about the sexual assault. 

"It has taken me many years of therapy to even be able to talk about it," she said. "I've come to a place, and we've come to a time in our society, where we can talk about these things much more openly."

She went on to say that as a mother of two young girls, she hoped that by sharing her story she can be known as an advocate. According to People magazine, Shields and her husband Chris Henchy share two daughters: Rowan Francis, 19, and Grier Hammond, 16.

"This is something that does happen every day, and it should not be happening," Shields said. "I felt that I had arrived at a place where I could talk about it. It's taken me a long time."