Even Brooke Shields Has Imposter Syndrome—Here's How She Overcomes It

I've considered Brooke Shields a beauty icon ever since I saw her in The Blue Lagoon (those brows! that hair! her glowing skin!). So when I got the opportunity to Zoom with her, I screamed, and then I quickly pulled myself together and made a list of questions that I've been dying to know. You're welcome.

In a sleek bun (secured with a tortoise claw clip), aviator glasses, and a NY T-shirt, Brooke was as cool as I'd hoped she'd be. She joked about sitting in front of a piece of art of a naked butt, the same spot she did parent teacher conferences (see, she's so funny!) and then we got right down to beauty business.

She uses super-fruit skincare.

For the past two years, Brooke has been the face of the skincare line True Botanicals. "When they first came to me, it was the first time I'd ever heard about chebula (an ayurvedic fruit, antioxidant, and the star ingredient in one of their lines)," Brooke says. "I never really understood serums that much—it just seemed like another step. But then they told me all about their formulas and ingredients, and that they're woman-run and I just loved everything they stood for," she explains. "Then they told me they were doing other products in the line, and they sent me the Chebula Extreme Cream and the smell alone was like, 'I couldn't get enough of it.'"

So what exactly is she putting on that flawless face of hers? "I like to put a little bit of the Vitamin C Booster—they keep it in the powder form so it doesn't lose its efficacy—I mix that in with the Chebula Serum and then I put the Chebula Cream on and I just notice the suppleness of my skin." (BRB while I go try this exact combo.)

She swears by these old school beauty tricks.

When I ask what the best beauty advice she ever received is, Brooke says, "I've always had red eyes, especially if I haven't slept and it's always been that way, so a makeup artist told me that after you put eye drops in [her fave are Lumify Redness Reliever Drops, $13; lumifyeyes.com], you breathe in through your nose quickly so it sucks it in and it doesn't run down your face. That's old school, oh, and I always blow upward through my lips to dry my mascara. And I use those little tooth flossers to separate my lashes. And I never stress about being a little swollen, because I look younger when I'm bloated anyway," she laughs.

She says her confidence is a work in progress.

Although many of us consider Brooke a beauty icon, she admits that she's not a naturally confident person. "Confidence is such a tricky thing. I'm naturally not a confident person. I have to keep reminding myself how far I've come and who I have in my life. I have a checklist of blessings that I go through, but if I made someone laugh, [...] someone else's laughter just sort of makes me sparkle inside. I have two extremely beautiful daughters and it [confidence] starts when they're little and they start picking apart the parts of their bodies they don't like because they don't look exactly like someone else on TikTok or whatever, and if you're me, and you're the 'Face of a Decade' on Time magazine, anything other than that is a failure. So it sets you up for failure because you can't maintain that. And it's not real; who decides that?" she says.

I couldn't help but ask Brooke her advice on raising confident daughters (I have a two-year-old daughter myself). "I think you have to start as young as that," Brooke says. "You throw in words like 'smart' and 'kind,'" she says. "You just constantly reiterate that beauty isn't just the outside, it's being smart—you just have to be a broken record."

She likes to stay awake for her massages.

"My favorite thing to do for self-care is get a beat-me-up massage, but if it's too froufrou, I start snoring and I tell them, 'Please nudge me; this is expensive and I don't want to miss it. I'm not paying for naps.'"

She's a "less is more" kind of brow girl.

When she tried laminating, she got irritated. When she tried tinting, she looked like Groucho Marx. When she tried micro-blading, the "ink bled" and "I had to get it zapped off, so I'm better off using GrandeBROW Enhancing Serum [$73, grandecosmetics.com]; it's a serum I use every night and it definitely makes them thicker. And I fill them in with a graphite pencil that's like a grafting pencil because it's the only one I can make sharp and it doesn't break off and I get teeny flicks."

She has actually pulled back on her workouts.

When I ask how she gets that banging bod, she says, "Just Pilates," adding that "the odd thing about it is that I've definitely atrophied but I fit in my clothes better." And about why she loves Pilates, she explains: "It's so hard and you sweat so much and feel stretched and you use your muscles, but there's no impact, so for someone my age, my knees can't take it."