Actress and model Brooke Shields has been working since she was 11 months old. But at age 59, she says she is in the most “challenging and exciting” stage of her career yet.
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“I think what’s exciting about it is it’s so unknown,” she told ForbesWomen editor, Maggie McGrath. Shields was honored on Forbes and Know Your Value’s fourth annual “50 Over 50” U.S. list, which was revealed on Thursday. The list celebrates women who have found success later in life and are shattering age and gender norms.
Shields recently founded Commence, a New York-based hair care company, for women over the age of 40. And earlier this year, Shields was elected president of the Actors Equity Association, a union representing approximately 51,000 actors and stage managers in the United States.
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Shields said she came up with the idea for Commence during the pandemic when she was having conversations online with women over the age of 40.
“I wanted to hear what women my age were really experiencing, what they were feeling … how they felt they were being represented… And inevitably, all of them started saying how upset they were … that there was this feeling that once you hit a certain age, that all of a sudden, you lose all your value,” said Shields. She noted that the marketing is geared to very young women “and then you’re sort of put into this world where you’re in Depends, dentures… There is a whole bracket in the middle.”
Commence is still in its early days. According to Forbes, Shields has raised $3.5 million from outside investors to help fund the company’s first three products, which were released in June. But she is on a mission to make women feel extraordinary.
“We have experience. We have years, we’ve gone through so much, many of us have raised children… or started companies… There should be no reason why we are discounted,” she said.
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McGrath recounted a time when Shields was in her 20s and being interviewed by a man who asked her if it ever worried her that her career had peaked already.
“I remember actually feeling bad for the person,” Shields recounted. “Because it seemed like such a ridiculous thing to ask … I remember thinking, ‘Oh, that seems like a waste of a question because I’m just beginning…’”
McGrath asked how Shields would answer that question today.
“I’m going to forever peak … Why should there be one peak? Why does everything then have to mean you’re going downhill… And yes, the world is set up to want to champion youth …and that is great. I’m not occupying that stage right now, but I am occupying an equally exciting, perhaps more empowered stage because I have excitement, belief, energy, and experience of all things … I now come at things with such a different level of belief in myself and a fight. I’m not knocked over easily anymore. So, I would say that I will keep peaking.”
Know Your Value staff