When Pretty Baby star Brooke Shields appeared on a panel to mark International Women’s Day last year, she sparked global amusement when she interrupted the Duchess of Sussex‘s story about advocating for gender equality at the age of 11.
Breaking the tension in the room, Brooke, said: ‘Excuse me, I’m so sorry. I’ve got to interrupt you there for one minute. I just want to give everybody here a context as to how we’re different. Well, when I was 11, I was playing a prostitute.’
She later mentioned the encounter to podcaster India Hicks as she had been worried, at the time, about the audience not wanting to listen to anyone being too serious.
And Hicks, daughter of Lady Pamela Mountbatten, lady-in-waiting to the late Queen Elizabeth II, and the late interior designer David Hicks, agreed.
Now Australian historian Michael Reed has revealed that, while Meghan, 44, is now a member of the Royal family, Brooke, 60, is a real Princess.
Her grandmother was Princess Marina Torlonia and her great-aunt Infanta Beatriz Torlonia was a great-aunt of the current King Felipe IV of Spain.
He told the Daily Mail: ‘I think Brooke Shields has the right to think that she does royalty better than the Duchess of Sussex. After all she is actually royal, rather than having married a royal.’
The Duchess of Sussex was telling her story about advocating for gender equality at the age of 11
When Pretty Baby star Brooke Shields appeared on a panel to mark International Women’s Day last year, she sparked global amusement when she interrupted the Duchess of Sussex’s story
Meghan, 44, is now a member of the Royal family , having married Prince Harry, but Brooke, 60, is a real Princess.
India Hicks, daughter of Lady Pamela Mountbatten, lady-in-waiting to the late Queen Elizabeth II, and the late interior designer David Hicks. Her godfather is King Charles III
Born on October 22, 1916, at Palazzo Núñez-Torlonia, in Rome, Shields’ grandmother Marina was the youngest daughter of Marino Torlonia, fourth Prince of Civitella-Cesi, who was descended from Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan and patron of Leonardo da Vinci.
Her father introduced the first motor car to Rome in 1892, causing the demise of carriages, and the Torlonias were renowned for having drained Lake Fucino – a feat attempted by Julius Caesar – to prevent frequent flooding.
Her mother was American Mary Elsie Moore, the daughter of a wealthy shipping magnate and Connecticut heiress, who was studying in Rome.
She had three siblings, Princess Olimpia; Alessandro, who married Infanta Beatriz of Spain, the elder daughter of King Alfonso XIII and Queen Ena of Spain, who were the grandparents of King Juan Carlos and great-grandparents of King Felipe IV; and Christina.
At the age of 18, she made her New York debut, juggling work as a charity fundraiser for the Democratic Party with spending the night at clubs.
She quickly became a society fixture and on January 30, 1936, she was invited to President Roosevelt’s 54th birthday celebrations where she dressed as ‘Wealth’ with a tall headdress and two handmaids.
At the following year’s Roosevelt Birthday Ball, she was one of 100 women, dressed as ‘The East’, representing the Eastern United States Fashion.
Donna Marina Torlonia di Civitella-Cesi (later Shields, grandmother of actress Brook Shields, right)
The Infanta Beatrix, daughter of the former King of Spain, is shown with her husband, Prince Alessandro Torlonia leaving the Jesuit Church of the Gesu in Rome
Prince Don Juan of Bourbon, his son Don Juan Carlos, Princess Beatriz Torlonia and her husband Prince Alessandro Torlonia after lunch in a restaurant on the Via Veneto in January 1962 in Rome
Katie Couric, Errin Haines, Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex, Nancy Wang Yuen and Brooke Shields at Keynote: Breaking Barriers, Shaping Narratives: How Women Lead On and Off the Screen as part of SXSW 2024 Conference
She married her first husband, Francis Xavier Shields, an American amateur tennis player, in 1940, in North Conway, New Hampshire, and the couple had two children, Brooke’s father Francis Alexander and Marina, before divorcing in 1950.
On December 29, that year, she married her second husband, Edward W Slater, who was an architectural partner at the firm Slater and Chait. She had a third child, Edward Torlonia Slater, in 1955.
But tragically, she was killed in a car accident on September 15 1960 after leaving the wedding of her nephew Marco Torlonia, sixth Prince of Civitella-Cesi, to Princess Orsetta Caracciolo, niece of film director Luchino Visconti, in Piacenza, Italy.
An obituary on Associated Press, stated: ‘Princess Marina Torlonia Slater, member of one of Italy’s noble families, was killed in an automobile accident tonight after she had attended a wedding.
‘Princess Marina, 44 years old, was the sister of Prince Alessandro Torlonia of Rome. Two others killed in the accident were identified as Duke Raffaele Canevaro, 47, of Galluzzo, and the Countess Eleanor Terry.
‘Princess Marina Torlonia Slater was married December 29, 1950, to Edward W. Slater, an architect with the firm of Slater & Chait of 244 East Thirty-second Street. Her marriage before that, to Frank Shields, former Davis Cup tennis star, ended in divorce. She had two sons: Frank Shields Jnr and Edward Slater and a daughter Marina Shields.’
