Brooke Shields says people tried to 'bribe' Princeton students to take pictures of her showering while she was enrolled at the university

• Brooke Shields said Princeton students were bribed by others to take pictures of her showering.
• She hired an undercover security team while attending the New Jersey ivy league college. 
• Shields told Howard Stern her peers eventually began "protecting" her from strangers.

On Tuesday's episode of "The Howard Stern Show" heard by Insider, Brooke Shields told host Howard Stern that while she attended Princeton University in the early 1980s, unnamed people were "bribing" university students to take pictures of her showering.

"People were...trying to bribe students to sneak pictures of me in the shower," she said, adding that at the time, the shower in her dorm was communal.

She said she hired a security team for her protection in large part because of invasive incidents like that. They walked around campus with her and "looked like students" so no one knew they worked for her.

Shields began acting at a young age and was sexualized as a teenager in movies like "Pretty Baby" (in which she played a child prostitute) and "The Blue Lagoon" (in which she played a young girl stranded on an island who becomes an object of fascination for her male peer).

Her public image was controlled in large part by her mother Teri Shields, who made questionable decisions for her daughter throughout the actor's career. Perhaps most infamously, Teri made Shields pose fully nude for Playboy at just 10 years old. 

Even now at 57, Shields told The Sunday Times that she feels defensive of her mother's choices for her. 

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

Her fame and reputation made it impossible for Shields to live the normal life of a college student while she was pursuing a degree in romance language and literatures.

She told Stern that unnamed parties once took pictures of her through a grate while she was spending time with a male friend, and marketed them as proof she was "dating in college." 

The "Suddenly Susan" star said she eventually had allies in her peers on campus, who began "protecting" how they could by walking her to class when they saw strange people appearing to stalk her. 

"Pretty Baby," a documentary about Shields' life, is available to stream now on Hulu.