Brooke Shields (May 31, 1965) is an American actress who became one of Mork's favorite repeat references through S3 & S4, after the (very) young, but physically mature, actress had sprung to fame through 1978-80, becoming a target mostly for the way someone so young was tossed into things beyond her years, and, her ubiquity in media.
About Brooke Shields[]
Shields began her career as a model when she was 11 months old in 1966. Her first job was for Ivory Soap, when she was shot by Francesco Scavullo. Eileen Ford, founder of the Ford Modeling Agency, said of Brooke Shields: "She is a professional child and unique. She looks like an adult and thinks like one." She continued as a successful child model with Eileen Ford, who, in her Lifetime biography, stated that she started her children's division just for Shields.
Shields worked with director Woody Allen in his 1977 film Annie Hall, but her role was cut out of the final edit of the film. In 1978, when she was 12 years old, Shields played a child prostitute in New Orleans at the beginning of the 20th century in the controversial film Pretty Baby. Shields garnered widespread notoriety in the role,
In 1980, 14-year-old Shields was the youngest fashion model ever to appear on the cover of Vogue. Later that same year, Shields appeared in controversial print and TV ads for Calvin Klein jeans. The TV ad included her saying the famous tagline, "You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing." She went topless at aged 14 in starred The Blue Lagoon (1980), and starred in another 'awakening' movie in Franco Zeffirelli's Endless Love (1981). By the age of 16, Shields had become one of the most recognizable faces in the United States, because of her dual career as a provocative fashion model and child actress.
In 1983, Shields suspended her career to attend Princeton University, where she graduated with a bachelor's degree in Romance Languages. In the 1990s, Shields returned to acting and appeared in minor roles in films. After a memorable comic turn in an episode of Friends. She went on to star in her own NBC sitcom Suddenly Susan (1996–2000), for which she received two Golden Globe nominations, and later in Lipstick Jungle (2008–2009).
From 2010 - 2018 she turned in another memorable turn in several episodes of The Middle as Rita Glossner, a matriarch of a supremely white trash suburban family. In 2017, Shields returned to NBC with a major recurring role in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit in the show's 19th season. Since 2014, Shields has also voiced Beverly Goodman in the Adult Swim animated series Mr. Pickles and its spinoff Momma Named Me Sheriff.
Mork's Multiple References[]
Apart from her actual age versus the roles and career she had in the late 70s and early 80's, her ubiquity and the notably heavy eyebrows she had, all came in for commentary by Mork through the show:
- Twelve Angry Appliances - Mork pokes fun at the tightness of Brooke Shields Calvin Klein jeans, claiming they're begging for air.
- Old Muggable Mork - Mork tells Cora in his 'update' that Brooke Shield's turned 40 on her 15th birthday.
- The Honeymoon - After Mork picks Mindy a rose in the garden on Ork, it sets on a siren and he tells her that the garden is a monument and picking the flower would be like 'shaving Brooke Shields eyebrows' back on Earth
- Cheerleaders in Chains - When Rep. Logan tells Mork it could take 2-3 years to get Mindy out of jail, an aghast Mork comments that that's enough time for Brooke Shields 'eyebrows to have met'.
- The Mork Report - When Mindy suggests that Mork reads rather than watches TV in Bed, he asks her for any of her magazines that don't have Brooke Shields on the cover.