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Brooke Shields thought George Michael was “extremely respectful” of her virginity.
The 56-year-old actress dated the late ‘Careless Whisper’ singer in the years before he came out as gay and before she learned about his sexuality, she thought the fact things developed so slowly between them was because he had so much love and respect for her.
She said: “I thought it must be love… I just thought he was being extraordinarily respectful of my virginity.”
The ‘A Castle for Christmas’ actress – who has daughters Rowan, 18, and Grier, 15, with husband Chris Henchy – also dated the likes of Liam Neeson and John Travolta but didn’t lose her virginity until she was 22 and dating Dean Cain while studying at Princeton.
However, Brooke didn’t “celebrate” her relationship with the ‘ Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman’ actor enough at the time.
She reflected to The Times magazine: “I wish I had celebrated us more, but I was just so laden with fear and guilt that I didn’t have a wild time.
“I want my girls to explore and experience and not feel guilt and not feel shame. My daughter talks to me about everything and I’m kind of like, ‘I didn’t bargain for this much information, but I’m going to listen.’ I look at her as an 18 year old and just think, ‘Wow, she is so much more in her body and she owns her sexuality.’ ”
Before meeting Chris when she was 25, Brooke was wed to tennis star Andre Agassi for two years but she insisted she didn’t enjoy much of a sexual awakening with him.
She said: “That was not a part of my first marriage.”
However, everything changed when she met Chris.
She said: “I would always walk backwards out of rooms and he’s like, ‘No, I want to grab onto you.’ I’d always felt like I could arm-wrestle every guy I’d ever dated – and win – but then this big hunky guy was like, ‘Come here, woman,’ and it felt really good. It’s not like, oh, I needed a man. But in a way, I did need a man. I needed a man to celebrate me, so that I could see that I was a woman.”
But the ‘Pretty Baby’ actress predicted their marriage would only last two years.
She laughed: “I was like, ‘Don’t count your chickens.’ I would always want a foot out of the door.”
Things weren’t plain sailing for the couple as Brooke struggled to get pregnant.
She recalled: “It was two years and seven rounds of IVF just to get Rowan. She was from the first batch. She was frozen for two years. I was like, ‘You’re stubborn.’ But it feels like the biggest failure. Women are getting pregnant all around you and you want this and it’s all you’ve wanted in your life. And then you think, ‘I don’t deserve it. I’ve had too much in my life.’
“Thank God I had a great doctor. And that she spoke to me in a way that took away the guilt. And the perseverance. She was not going not to get me pregnant.”
