Brooke Shields said her father was in 'absolute denial' about the career choices her mother made for her

• Brooke Shields told The Sunday Times that her father was an important figure in her life.
• Frank Shields was uncomfortable with her celebrity status, Shields told the publication.

Brooke Shields said making movies and spending time with her father, who disapproved of the decisions her alcoholic mother made for her career, helped her escape the emotional abuse she faced as a child.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, where Shields reflected on her relationship with her ever-present momager Teri Shields, the star and model said that acting and her father proved to be important outlets of escape.

"Making movies was always my safety net," Shields told the Sunday Times.

Shields also spoke highly of her father, Frank Shields, who divorced her mother when she was an infant. Although Shields was raised by her mother, she told the publication that she wanted her father to "be proud of me."

In the interview with The Sunday Times, published ahead of Shields' new documentary "Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields," Shields speaks about many of the explicit roles and situations she was exposed to as a child.

This included a fully-nude photoshoot for a Playboy publication at age 10, a role in "Pretty Baby," a movie about a child prostitute, and a handful of other films with overtly sexual themes, like "The Blue Lagoon."

Shields told the Sunday Times her father disapproved but never vocalized his disdain of her mother's choices for her career, saying he was in "denial" of her celebrity.

Following her years-long career under her mother's management, Shields was accepted into Princeton, after which her father told her "I can't believe you turned out so well," she told the Sunday Times.

Shields' father died in 2003 after a battle with prostate cancer. In 2018, Shields told InStyle magazine that she wore her father's ring with her family's signet on it on a chain around her neck during the birth of her daughter Rowan Francis, also born in 2003.

Shields' documentary, premiering on Hulu on April 3, follows her career from child actress to an adult who managed not to fall apart, despite intense scrutiny from the outside world.