"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.[2] She continued as a successful child model with model agent Eileen Ford, who, in her Lifetime Network 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.[24] In 1978, when she was 12 years old, Shields played a child prostitutein the controversial film Pretty Baby. 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."[25]
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."[2][26][27] Brooke Shields ads would help catapult Klein's career to super-designer status.[28]
From 1981 to 1983, Shields, her mother, photographer Garry Gross, and Playboy Presswere involved in litigation in the New York City Courts over the rights to photographs her mother had signed away to Gross (when dealing with models who are minors, a parent or legal guardian must sign such a release form while other agreements are subject to negotiation). Gross was the photographer of a controversial set of nude images taken in 1975 of a then ten-year-old Brooke Shields with the consent of her mother, Teri Shields, for the Playboy Press publication Sugar 'n' Spice. The images portray Shields nude, standing and sitting in a bathtub, wearing makeup and covered in oil. The courts ruled in favor of the photographer due to a strange twist in New York law. It would have been otherwise had Brooke Shields been considered a child "performer" rather than a model.[29]"
"Shields' first major film role was as a lead actress in Louis Malle's Pretty Baby (1978), a movie in which she played a child named Violet who lived in a brothel (in which there were numerous nude scenes).[2] She was only 12 years old when the film was released, and controversy regarding child pornographyarose.[32][33][34] This was followed by a slightly less controversial and less notable film, Wanda Nevada (1979)."
"Shields began her television career at an early age. In 1980, she was the youngest guest star to ever appear on The Muppet Show, in which she and the Muppets put on their own version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland."