Courtesy of Jennifer Graylock-Graylock.com
When Brooke Shields needed dating advice in her single days, she consulted the 41st president of the United States.
The actress, author and model revealed that George H.W. Bush used to be her “confidant” and that she considered him a substitute grandfather — so much so that she had a nickname for him.
“I call him Papa Bush. I was dating somebody [whose father] was an ambassador in Bermuda … He was my confidant about this boyfriend,” Shields told the crowd at the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy’s New York Celebration of Reading event at the Lotos Club on the Upper East Side Wednesday night.
Lauren Bush Lauren — who hosted the event — laughed as she recalled of her late grandfather: “He loved some good gossip.”
In the early ’90s, Shields dated Kelly Gaines, whose father, Eb Gaines, was the head of the US consulate in Bermuda under Bush — and she once said Kelly was a better kisser than JFK Jr., telling Redbook in 1991: “When I kissed him I got a tingly feeling in my tummy that I didn’t when I kissed John Junior.”
Shields, 59, told the Lotos Club crowd that “Papa Bush” approved of her now husband, film director Chris Henchy, whom she married in 2001.
“The Blue Lagoon” star said she got a call from the former POTUS in 2010 while shooting a movie in Boston— a two-hour drive from the Bush family’s Kennebunkport, Maine, summer compound.
“I pick up the phone — no introduction or nothing. ‘Rumor has it, you’re close to Kennebunkport’ if you do not come and visit me young lady you’re in big trouble,’” she recalled Bush telling her. “I said, ‘OK sir, thank you. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’ I call my husband and I’m like, ‘We’ve got to go to Kennebunkport.’
“My husband arrives late, and I go, ‘You have to play golf.’ I think he played three times in his life,” she added. “We get there, we get out and of course he’s playing with the sports commentator [Jim Nantz]. Papa Bush gave him his clubs carved with every country, carved with monuments.”
Then, Bush turned to Shields to get the scoop.
“I hear, ‘You’re in this cart with me, young lady.’ He’s driving the cart,” she said of the former president. “We’re driving around, and he’s like, ‘So, tell me how the relationship is. Good kids. I like the guy’ … My husband must have lost 40 pounds just from nerves.”
Shields added that Bush and wife Barbara felt like “grandparents” to her.
“I don’t have really many relatives. He was that symbol to me. I looked up to her so much … Your grandparents for me were very important in my youth and in my life and in my dating days,” she told Bush Lauren at the event, held to raise support for the Barbara Bush Foundation’s nationwide literacy work.
She also recalled popping her head into the couple’s quarters while staying at Kennebunkport to tell them about rain getting in the house — and Bush saying, “‘Maybe [you] can answer the question — come in here.’ They’re each in their lounger chairs with the TV dinner in front of them, watching a “CSI” or something. [He said,] ‘Who do you think did it, Brooke?’ I sat there for 40 minutes watching CSI on the floor … It was one of the sweetest moments of my entire life.”
Shields was joined Wednesday by best-selling authors Jessamine Chan and Kirsten Miller, along with Miss New York 2024 and literacy advocate Abigail Quammen, MSNBC anchor Ali Velshi — and, via video, the Bushes’ granddaughter and “Today” co- host, Jenna Bush Hager.
The actress dished about her own forthcoming book, “Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed To Get Old,” out in January, that explores aging and stereotypes that women face later in life.
“When I went to [the publisher] with the title, I thought they’re never going to let me do this title. It quickly became a book about age, agency and where society puts us and where marketers put us and where the beauty industry puts us. It became this bigger exploration about women and aging in our society,” she said.