‘Never again’: Brooke Shields says her 1980 movie Blue Lagoon wouldn’t be made today

Brooke Shields has claimed that her film Blue Lagoon would not be made today.

The actor starred in the 1980 film alongside Christopher Atkins. Aged 14 and 18 at the time of filming, respectively, Shields and Atkins played cousins who were stranded on a deserted island.

As the characters matured into adulthood, they fell in love and had a child together.

Though the film received poor reviews from critics, Blue Lagoon was a commercial success – it made $58m (£47m) at the box office, and came ninth in North America’s list of highest-grossing films in 1980.

Atkins was a recent guest on Shields’ podcast, Now What?, and they looked back at their experience making the film decades ago.

In Shields’s view, Blue Lagoon wouldn’t be made under today’s standards.

“Never again will a movie be made like that,” she said on the episode, released on Tuesday (20 December). “It wouldn’t be allowed.”

Atkins added: “Animals were hurt in the movie. We were spearing fish and all kinds of crazy things. Children are naked running down a beach. Couldn’t do that now.”

With the film featuring the children growing up and developing feelings for each other, Shields and Atkins had to kiss.

Shields claimed that producers wanted the co-stars to grow closer for the sake of the film. She continued: “I remember thinking, ‘Hey, let’s get to know each other first rather than trying to make us fall in love with each other and force the situation.’ I did not react well to being forced into feeling anything.

“I wanted to sort of be left on my own – I hadn’t really kissed anybody, really, at that age.”

Atkins then reasoned that her inexperience was helpful for the authenticity of the film: “That’s what it was all about.”

Previously, Shields has written about her experience making Blue Lagoon as being an “interesting disconnect”.

“You sort of desensitise yourself to anything sexual,” she wrote in her 2014 memoir, There Was A Little Girl: The Real Story of My Mother and Me.

“In Blue Lagoon, I’m using a glue gun, taping my hair, anything I can so my body doesn’t show I have boobs. And I didn’t realise I was doing it, because I was a kid.”