Actress Brooke Shields has lamented she was sexualized as a child star in Hollywood, being at the center of an industry that “is predicated on eating its young.”

Fox News reports the 58-year-old rose to fame at the age of 11 when she played a child prostitute in the controversial 1978 film Pretty Baby. Shields was required to appear in multiple nude scenes. . .

The Blue Lagoon star reflected on those roles and other requirements Friday as she appeared alongside Meghan Markle and Katie Couric on the SXSW panel, “Breaking Barriers, Shaping Narratives: How Women Lead On and Off the Screen.” . . .

“I was at the center of it,” Shields said. “And I was promoting it and I was doing it.” She continued:

And I was lucky because I was surrounded by a very strong mom. I never did move to Hollywood. I always went to regular school.

So I had this sort of community around me that was protecting me, buoying me. And so I did not become the type of statistic that Hollywood created.

Hollywood is predicated on eating its young.

(Read more from “Brooke Shields Reveals Being Sexualized as a Child Star: ‘Hollywood Is Predicated on Eating Its Young’” HERE)