1981-1984 Brooke Shields

On how they first met in 1981, Conversations with Rabbi Shmuley, 2000/1


MJ: Now Brooke Shields, she was one of the loves of my life. We dated a lot. Her pictures were all over my walls and mirrors. I was at the Academy Awards with Diana Ross and she just came up to me and said, “Hi, I’m Brooke Shields. Are you going to the after pary?” I said, “Yeah,” and I just melted. I was about twenty three… during Off The Wall. I thought, “Does, she know[that photographs of her are] all over my room?” And we went on the dance floor. And man we exchanged numbers and I was up all night, spinning around in my room, just so happy. She was classy. We had one encounter when she got real intimate and I chickened out. And I shouldn’t have.

Brett Ratner interviewing Michael, 2003


Brett: Any posters in your bedroom as kid and of who?

MJ: Yeah, Brooke Shields. Everywhere. My sisters would get jealous and tear them off the wall.

Brett: Really? (both laughing) Brooke Shields? Okay.

Brooke Shields


I met him when I was 13 (note: she was 15 in March 1981). There were a handful of child stars at the time – actress Jodie Foster, Michael and myself among them – and we were friends because we shared an understanding of how difficult life was in the public eye. When we were together, we were in a safe place. We could be ourselves.”

Ola Ray on the filming of Thriller (Oct 1983), 03/02/2008


Ola and Michael became good friends during the two-week shoot. “I teased him, saying I wanted to be his girl,” she says. Ola Ray remembered Michael talking a lot about Brooke Shields between takes.

“I had a crush on Michael myself and I would have loved to have been his girl but at the time he was interested in Brooke Shields,” Ola explains.

Michael is seen with Brooke at Princeton, sometime 1983-1987


After working in the dining hall in various capacities for 27 years, Wilder has seen it all. He has been witness to fraternity pledges wearing diapers and pink leotards — dressed as Cupid — to meals, and has even seen actress Brooke Shields ’87 and singer Michael Jackson on campus.

Rcokwell, 1984


Michael is having an affair with Brooke Shields and sees her a lot. Every time I talk to him about her he smiles and seems to be very, very happy. I keep saying to him ”Do I hear wedding bells, Michael?” and he breaks into a big grin. But he dates other women, including a former Miss Universe and Tatum O’Neal. He’s also very clsoe to Diana Ross but he isn’t obsessed with her.

February 28th 1984, 26th Annual Grammy Awards

Michael narrating his private home movies of the ’84 Grammy’s


(Scene of Michael and Brooke Shields leaving their car at an awards ceremony):

Girls: Michael! Michael!

Reporter: I was wondering if you’d…

(Walking to the Grammies; Clip labelled Grammy Awards 1984)

MJ: Oh this is on the way to the Grammy’s. I had gotten a record thirteen, I think, thirteen nominations for Thriller. And we, well, I didn’t know what was gonna happen really. That’s Emmanuel Lewis, one of my best friends.

Brooke: Oh you’re here too, Emmanuel (laughs)…Brilliant!

[...]

MJ: Oh there’s my man. The real creator of rock n roll, Chuck Berry.

(Chuck Berry lifting Brooke Shields)

Brooke: (laughing) I’m Michael’s size remember!

(Crosstalk)

Brooke: I’ll take that as a compliment.

MJ: Emmanuel. He started to rope onto her dress! He’s a flirt. See, I liked her and he liked her too. So, it’s competition.

Right On Magazine, March, 1984


Now,let’s talk about Brooke and her thing with Michael. She says they’re just friends and her mom is telling everybody the same thing. But their comments haven’t hushed up the gossips, who are still whispering that there’s some hot love affair going on.

Don’t believe it. All you have to do is see those two together and you know, there’s nothing going on. Like Brooke says, they’re just friends.

Its the most innocent-looking relationship you ever want to see. She’s more like a fancy decoration than a girlfriend.

And why is Brooke doing this? She’s no dummy. Its great publicity for her. Hanging out with Michael has gotten her more publicity than she’s ever had. What’s funny is that she’s getting all this attention by playing second fiddle to Michael.

When they’re out together, he’s the star. He’s the one everyone wants to talk to and photograph. Publically, she says she doesn’t mind taking a back seat to Michael, but privately, she’s telling her pals that she minds very much. After all Brooke has a big ego.

But all the publicity she’s gotten through Michael hasn’t helped her film career. Her new film Sahara, doesn’t look like a box-office smash.

The word around Hollywood is that this publicity is working against her. After all, she is white and Michael is black. They may be big stars but they’re still an interracial couple. A lot of people are turned off by interracial dating. Michael is such a superstar that very little could effect his popularity. But Brooke is in a different position. Its possible that people who don’t like interracial relationships are turning their back on Brooke.

One thing for sure Brooke has made a lot of enemies among black females. She was with Michael at the New York party, at the Grammys and the American Music Awards. She was getting some nasty stares from black females at those three events. It was particularly bad at the New York party. Black ladies there were really giving her dirty looks. If dirty looks could kill, Brooke would be in the graveyard now.

“Growing Up In The Jackson Family” Latoya’s Autobio (pub. 1991)


Around the same time Michael was recuperating, the press was linking him romantically with Brooke Shields, the actress and model. My brother had been as sheltered from the opposite sex as I was. He too believed that sex came after marriage, and marriage was the goal of dating. Up till then he’d had only one close friendship, with Tatum O’Neal in the late 1970s. Tatum, just fifteen then, was in some ways more sophisticated than Michael, running with an older, faster crowd. We always found it so strange that her father, actor Ryan O’Neal, regularly left her and her younger brother Griffin unsupervised for days at a time, but for them, and many kids in Hollywood, that was considered normal.

I recall so many times when I’ve seen famous children, sometimes not even in their teens, in the company of adults known to drink, use drugs, and who knows what else. Perhaps some of my siblings lost their childhoods, but it was to work, not drugs or alcohol. Very few Hollywood children ever really get to be kids.

Despite the press’s portrayal, Michael and Brooke’s relationship was a friendship, plain and simple – at least in Michael’s mind. It was obvious to Janet and me that she had other ideas. About to watch a movie with us at home, Brooke would declare, “I’m going to sit by Michael,” grabbing his hand. “Michael, where are we going to sit?”

Janetn and I concurred that she was a bit forward, especially when she started making plans for them as a couple. Brooke longed to accompany Michael to the two upcoming American Music Awards and the Grammys, and pestered him about it every chance she got.

“Michael, I’m going to be your date, right?” For a supposed question, it sure had a ring of finality to it. “It’s going to be you and me.”

“Well…” Michael laughed nervously. Just like when it came to business, he could never say no. He turned to me and whispered urgently, “La Toya, say something.”

“It’s your problem,” I hissed out of the side of my mouth.

“… Uh, I don’t know if I’m going to take anybody or not,” he replied at last, though to no avail.

“Sure you are,” Brooke said happily. “The two of us are going.”

Later Michael cornered me and asked, “La Toya, how can I tell her no?”

“You just have to tell her, Mike.”

Janet, who really couldn’t stand Brooke, calling her “Giraffe Butt” behind her back, eagerly offered, “Let me tell her!”

Michael surrendered, “No,” he sighed. “I guess I’ll have to tell her. But you know” — he lowered his voice — “She tried to kiss me!”

“She did?”

“Yea, she’s more aggressive than she looks.”

This was a common scenario. Other women, probably attracted to Michael’s relative innocence, approached him even more directly. But other women were simply friends, and he receieved many gifts from them, which he took as thoughtful tokens of their affection. One famous actress gave him a set of beautiful gray silk sheets monogrammed with her initials, ET. We thought they were so sumptuous and pretty: we never thought there was anything untoward about the gesture.

McCall’s May 1984


“She is the most sincere, understanding and interesting girl I’ve ever known,” Michael has said of Brooke. “We talk on the phone for hours without getting bored.”

The Ledger, 29th May 1984


Shields says Jackson won’t give her a “really, real answer”

Contact Music, August 1984


BROOKE SHIELDS wanted to give former boyfriend MICHAEL JACKSON the perfect present for his birthday when they dated in the 1980s – a life-sized mannequin modelled on her.

The actress, then 19, begged her mother TERI to contact London company ADEL ROOTSTEIN to create her likeness for the THRILLER star.

But her dreams were dashed when she was told she would need to take three weeks out of her busy schedule for the figure to be made.

Managing director MICHAEL SOUTHGATE recalls, “I presumed it was because Brooke was launching jeans. But Teri just wanted one as Michael Jackson’s birthday present.”

But the gift would have been welcomed by Jackson, who previously said, “I like to talk to them. I surround myself with people I want to be my friends. And I can do that with mannequins.”

Cornflakes with John Lennon, Robert Hilburn, Re: Victory tour post concert party: (Los Angeles Victory tour sometime Nov 11th -9th of Dec 1984)


He [Michael] hinted that his relationship with Brooke Shields was more serious, but what I saw at his postconcert party in Los Angeles left me with doubts. Rather than staying at the house in Encino, Michael had booked a suite at a downtown hotel. Brooke and her mother showed up early, but sat for more than an hour in chairs near the door. Michael, meanwhile, was in his bedroom a few feet away, pillow fighting with a half-dozen five- and six-year-olds. He did come into the living room to say hello to a few celebrity guests, but then went right back into the bedroom to watch cartoons-all out of Brooke’s sight. Finally, Brooke’s mother had had enough and they both left. (Hilburn, Corn Flakes with John Lennon, p. 160)