BROOKE SHIELDS: I didn't lose my virginity until age 22 - and never felt able to indulge my appetite for sex. Now, from thinning hair to belly fat, my body's changing...
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My husband Chris and I have been married for 23 years and together for 26, unusual enough in Hollywood for people to wonder why we’ve lasted this long. Of course, I had a starter marriage that quickly ended. My mom had been a hugely controlling force in my life, and when I married my first husband, [the tennis champion] Andre Agassi, I walked into another controlling, rigid relationship, and for a while I did whatever he said.
![[Brooke with husband Chris Henchy. 'Chris has been working out at a boxing gym recently, and he looks incredible,' she writes]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/10/21/93975671-0-image-a-15_1736543298283.jpg)
One of the reasons I’d married him was that I liked being in a relationship with someone more famous than I was. After a lifetime of always being the focus, it was a relief to be able to slink into the background a bit. I was still married to Andre when I met Chris in 1999, at the gym on the Warner Bros lot. We became friendly because we’d see each other at that gym from time to time – I was working on the TV sitcom Suddenly Susan, he was writing for a show on the lot – but we didn’t start to date until the following year, after my divorce.
![[Brooke with daughters Grier, left, and Rowan. She writes: 'For decades, much of my life had been owned by other people. My mother. The media. Hollywood. Fans. My husbands. My daughters']](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/10/21/93975665-0-image-a-16_1736543303176.jpg)
At the time, I was broken. My marriage had ended, my best friend had just died and my father had been diagnosed with cancer. It felt like Chris swooped in and folded me into his arms. That he saved me. I’ve always been a sucker for romance, and I liked the whole knight-in-shining-armour approach.
