Brooke Shields Goes From Pretty Baby To Hot MILF

LOS ANGELES (TNA) – Brooke Shields has always had it.

But when she was cast as one of the three leading ladies of NBC’s “Lipstick Jungle,” she honestly believed that she’d not be asked to flaunt it.

Brooke Shields is surprised at how many bedroom scenes she has in her new NBC series 'Lipstick Jungle' -- but she's not complaining.

But sex sells, Pretty Baby. Or had you forgotten?

“When we signed on,” Shields says, “all of us were basically signing on to kind of a 9 o’clock show [which is to say, something that wouldn’t be for adults only]. Then we became a 10 o’clock show and we were all taking a trip to the lingerie shop, practically crying.”

Not that it’s a stretch for Our Miss Brooke to look nice in lingerie.

But she thought costars Lindsay Price and Kim Raver would be doing all the heavy lifting in the bedroom.

“I thought I would turn out to be the comic relief,” she says, “and I’m turning out to have as many love scenes as the other girls do!”

Maybe Shields should have known better. The show -- about three modern New York women making it big in the Big Apple -- is based on the novel of the same title by Candace Bushnell, whose earlier book inspired HBO’s “Sex and the City.”

Granted, “Lipstick Jungle,” which premieres on Thursday, Feb. 7, isn’t an exact “Sex and the City” clone. And these ladies, on NBC, certainly can’t be as naughty as Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall were allowed to be on HBO.

But it’s hard to be very surprised that they’d want to sex up the show.

Still, Shields maintains, “It was sprung on us.”

Maybe she naively thought that sex wouldn’t have to be the driving force in a TV show about three beautiful women. Or maybe she merely believed that an early-40s mother of two wouldn’t be asked to strut her stuff onscreen.

Lindsay Price, Brooke Shields and Kim Raver star in the new NBC drama 'Lipstick Jungle,' which debuts Feb. 7.

But crying all the way to the lingerie shop? How disingenuous is that comment, particularly given how underdressed she has been at various times in her showbiz career?

She was naked in her first child-modeling gig, although there was no controversy about that. She was an Ivory Snow baby, not yet one year old.

But in 1975, at age 10, she posed for artistic bathtub nudes for photographer Garry Gross. In the ’80s, she sued the photographer but failed to wrest control of the photos away from him -– and, in 1998, they wound up on display in Manhattan’s American Fine Arts Gallery.

At age 12, she played a child prostitute -– and did a lot of onscreen naked time -- in “Pretty Baby,” a movie that couldn’t possibly be made today without arrest warrants being issued.

Back in the 1980s, Shields let nothing come between her and her Calvin Klein jeans.

And in 1980, at age 15 and still hands off, she drove guys crazy by wearing a too-tight pair of jeans in Calvin Klein ads and by wearing nothing at all in “The Blue Lagoon” (albeit this film used a nude body double).

Later, in the 1990s, Shields reportedly turned down roles in such movies as “Wild Orchid” and “Basic Instinct” because she didn’t want to drop her duds.

Yet today, she admits, it’s somewhat flattering to be considered bedroom-scene material.

“I’m really pretty proud to be a mom of two and able to put on the wardrobe that they give to me and not use a body double,” Shields says. “I guess it’s a shout-out to women to say, ‘You should be proud of what your body looks like at this age.’

“And why not? If you have the right lighting, you can show it off.”

Our Amber Alert fantasy girl has grown up -– and, we’re happy to add, she became a MILF.