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    Tonys Red Carpet Looks: Angelina Jolie, Brooke Shields and More

    Broadway’s biggest stars descended on Lincoln Center in Manhattan on Sunday for the Tony Awards, an annual celebration of all the people — casts, crews and creatives — who make live theater the spectacle that it is. Since many attendees spend most of the week in costumes, the Tonys was also a chance to get dressed up and showcase personal style.The red carpet — technically a shade of blue — was packed with A-listers, a reflection of the star-studded productions that have recently overtaken Broadway. Alicia Keys, Jay-Z, Sarah Paulson, Billy Porter and Nicole Scherzinger were among the celebrities who graced the awards show this year.Purple might have been the color of the evening, with several attendees incorporating shades of it into their ensembles. Men and women alike embraced bows, which appeared around some people’s necks and at the shoulders or waists of others. Of all the outfits, the following 17 stood out the most — for better or worse.Elle Fanning: Most Femme Fatale!Dia Dipasupil/Getty ImagesInstead of a shirt, the actress, a star of the play “Appropriate,” wore a silver necklace beneath her sleek Saint Laurent tuxedo jacket.Brooke Shields: Most Sunny and Sensible!Dia Dipasupil/Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Best and Worst Moments From the 2024 Tony Awards

    Alicia Keys and Jay-Z’s high-wattage performance was a highlight, as were first-time wins for Kecia Lewis, Jonathan Groff and David Adjmi.Ariana DeBose ended her third turn as Tonys host with a mic drop. Otherwise, last night’s ceremony offered a first time for everything and very nearly everyone. All eight winners in the acting categories took home their first trophies. (How is it possible that this is Jonathan Groff’s inaugural win?) The playwright David Adjmi, in his Broadway debut, won for “Stereophonic,” as did its director Daniel Aukin, also a Tony-winning newbie. Danya Taymor took home the prize for best direction of a musical for “The Outsiders,” her initial win. (“The Outsiders” also won for best musical.) In a mellow, equitable night, the other awards were spread among many of the nominated shows, with “Stereophonic,” “The Outsiders,” “Appropriate” and an ingeniously reimagined “Merrily We Roll Again” carrying home the top prizes. Here are the highs and lows — and wait, is that Jay-Z on the stairs? — of the ceremony.Now that’s putting on a show“The Outsiders” won best new musical. As the New York Times’s chief theater critic, Jesse Green, put it, Tony voters went with “the underdog show about perennial underdogs.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe producers and director were the same, but so much about this year’s telecast was a vast improvement on that of previous years. The pacing was swifter: The main broadcast ended on time and the pre-broadcast ended early. The dialogue was more dignified: no brainless chatter or mawkish introductions. The transitions were smoother: Sets were changed live on camera, saving time and showing us how theater actually works. And the investors who used to throng the stage when their shows won awards — not a good look, plus a traffic problem — were sequestered in some alternative universe and beamed in by video. All this allowed the show to deliver better entertainment while leaving room for thoughtfulness and giddiness, and both together. For the first time in a long time, the Broadway on TV felt like the one I know. JESSE GREENWrong-footed openingSara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe Neil Patrick Harris years set an imposing bar for Tony broadcast opening numbers, and this year’s attempt, a strained variety-show knockoff that prematurely promised “this party’s for you,” didn’t end the drought. The Tonys would have done better opening with “Empire State of Mind” from “Hell’s Kitchen” — the night’s highest-wattage performance, featuring Alicia Keys and Jay-Z. Or, better if not bolder: “Willkommen” from “Cabaret,” which was expertly staged for the camera and drenched in Eddie Redmayne’s kooky charisma. SCOTT HELLERThird time’s the charmWendell Pierce presenting Kara Young with her Tony, which she received for “Purlie Victorious.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Brooke Shields Elected President of Stage Actors’ Union

    She takes office immediately. The previous leader of Actors’ Equity, Kate Shindle, had been president since 2015, and did not run again.Brooke Shields, the model-turned-actor who has starred in films, on television and onstage, has been elected as the next president of Actors’ Equity Association, the labor union representing stage actors and stage managers.Shields, 58, will take office immediately. She succeeds Kate Shindle, who had been the union’s president since 2015, and announced last month that she would not seek re-election.The position of Equity president is a volunteer job, and Shields was elected to a four-year term. There have been a number of other well-known performers who have served in the post previously, including Burgess Meredith, Ellen Burstyn, Colleen Dewhurst and Ron Silver.Shields won the election with about half the vote; the balance was split between two Equity vice presidents, Erin Maureen Koster and Wydetta Carter. Her victory was reported by the newsletter Broadway Journal and announced by the union on Friday; a union spokesman said she was not available for an interview.In a campaign video posted on YouTube, Shields said that among her priorities would be lobbying for greater government funding for the arts. “I understand the real need to support live theater, and I have a history of being able to open doors and of being able to help,” she said.Equity has about 51,000 members, and represents them in contract negotiations around the country. Just last week, the union won the right to represent a variety of performers at Disneyland, so the union will now need to try to bargain for a contract for those workers.The union is negotiating for a new contract for Off Broadway workers, and it is at odds with the Broadway League over a new contract governing developmental work — how performers are compensated when participating in workshops for shows in development. Equity has threatened that its members would stop working on those developmental projects if a deal is not reached by mid-June.Shields became famous through films like “Pretty Baby” and “The Blue Lagoon” and by modeling, notably for Calvin Klein. She has appeared in five Broadway musicals, always as a replacement: “Grease,” “Chicago,” “Cabaret,” “Wonderful Town” and “The Addams Family,” as well as a handful of Off Broadway shows.Her early career, and the problematic ways in which she was sexualized as a child and adolescent, was the subject of a documentary last year. More

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    ‘Mother of the Bride’ Review: Brooke Shields Comes Face to Face With an Old Flame

    Brooke Shields plays a single mother who comes face to face with her college ex-boyfriend at her daughter’s destination wedding in this tired romantic comedy.How often do exes get back together at destination weddings? Based on Hollywood rom-coms, one might assume it’s an epidemic. The last few years alone have seen rancorous pairs reconcile on the tropical beaches of Bali (“Ticket to Paradise”), the tropical coastline of Sydney, Australia (“Anyone But You”) and in the tropical jungles of the Philippines (“Shotgun Wedding”). What a surprise to see the trend reappear in Netflix’s “Mother of the Bride,” set in Phuket, Thailand, at a tropical resort.These movies, as critics have pointed out, are themselves rehashing an older Hollywood trope: the comedy of remarriage, in which a separated couple reunites to find their acrimony transformed into revitalized affection. (A classic example is Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn in the 1940 rom-com “The Philadelphia Story.”)In “Mother of the Bride,” that twosome consists of Lana (a committed Brooke Shields) and Will (Benjamin Bratt), ex-beaus who severed ties after college. In Phuket, they discover that their grown children — Lana’s daughter, Emma (Miranda Cosgrove), and Will’s son, RJ (Sean Teale) — are betrothed.“Mother of the Bride” is directed by Mark Waters (“Mean Girls”) with an apparent allergy to verisimilitude. Early on, we are told that the opulent Thai ceremony will be bankrolled by Emma’s company (she’s an intern) and livestreamed to “millions of eyes.” These fantasies of pomp and circumstance often serve to make Lana and Will’s budding romance feel like a B-story to the action — although that may be a blessing when the best screwball gag this movie can muster is a pickleball shot to the groin.Mother of the BrideNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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    Brooke Shields Does Cabaret

    In story and song at the Café Carlyle in Manhattan, the star makes sense of a career that has included chaste nights with George Michael and drama with her mother.“Most of the time, I’m halfway content.”Those words are Bob Dylan’s, and they were delivered one night last week by Brooke Shields during her sold-out debut show at the Café Carlyle, the intimate Manhattan supper club where Bobby Short, Elaine Stritch and Debbie Harry have performed.It was five months after Ms. Shields had returned to the spotlight with “Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields,” an acclaimed documentary that chronicled the ups and downs of a career that got its start in the 1970s, when she was a child model and actress marketed as a sex symbol.A number of celebrities came out to see her at the venue, which is blocks away from the Upper East Side apartment where she grew up. At a table close to the stage were the actors Naomi Watts, Billy Crudup and Laura Dern. Nearby sat Mariska Hargitay, with whom Ms. Shields has worked with on “Law & Order: SVU.” The crowd also included two men who had done cabaret at the Carlyle: Isaac Mizrahi, who designed the loosefitting orange dress Ms. Shields was wearing, and Alan Cumming.Whether by design or chance, Ms. Shields, 58, has reflected the mood of the times across her nearly five-decade career. In the louche, druggie ’70s, she starred (at age 11) in “Pretty Baby,” the Louis Malle film about a romantic relationship between an adult man and a child prostitute. In the striving, just-say-no ’80s, she graduated from Princeton and wrote a self-help book for teenagers in which she discussed her decision to remain a virgin.The celebrity guests at the show included, from left, Laura Dern, Billy Crudup and Naomi Watts.Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesIn the next decade she starred on Broadway (in a revival of “Grease”), displayed a talent for pratfalls in a hit sitcom (“Suddenly Susan”), and married and divorced a tennis star (Andre Agassi). In 2001, she married the comedy writer and filmmaker Chris Henchy, with whom she has had two children, and returned to the Broadway stage in “Chicago.” She has also found time to write memoirs and host a podcast, “Now What.”And Ms. Shields pointed out during the show that somewhere along the course of her varied career: “I performed at Sea World. With Lucille Ball.”Her Café Carlyle residency is scheduled to run through Sept. 23. Every night is sold out. On Tuesday, she opened with “I Think We’re Alone Now,” making it into an ironic lament about how she has rarely felt alone since her mother decided she would be a star.“I practically came out of the womb famous,” she said, during a spoken-word interlude. “They tell me the doctor asked for a selfie.”She also went through periods when career seemed to be over: “The other day,” she said from the stage, “I was in the airport and the flight attendant came up to me and said, ‘Oh my God, you’re Caitlyn Jenner!’”In “Fame Is Weird,” a song written for the show by Matthew Sklar and Amanda Green, she moved from her encounters with the public to her experiences with fellow celebrities. In the intro, she said she had turned down Donald J. Trump when he asked her out on a date, but soon conceded that she had consented to Elizabeth Taylor’s request that she pre-chew her gum.“I chewed it first,” Ms. Shields said, “so I got the better end of the deal.”Mariska Hargitay, seen here speaking with the actor Beth Ostrosky Stern, worked with Ms. Shields on the show “Law & Order: SVU.” Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesShe also recounted being mean girl-ed by some of he world’s best-known women. When she met Bette Davis at the Oscars, she said, “Hi, I’m Brooke Shields,” to which the star replied, “Yes, you are.” A similar encounter occurred when Ben Stiller brought her to Madonna’s house, Ms. Shields said. The greeting she received from Madonna was curt: “Oh, you.”In many ways, the show seemed like an effort by Ms. Shields to work through her ambivalence about having fallen closer to earth after the years of childhood and teenage stardom. In the second half, she roasted and paid tribute to her mother, Teri Shields, who in the ’70s and ’80s became a focal point for the culture’s misgivings about stage parenting and the sexualization of children in Hollywood.“She has been in the press almost more than I have,” Ms. Shields said, “and, probably, you all have your opinions of her.”She went on to note that life with her mother, who died in 2012, wasn’t all bad.“There was a lot of laughter and so much fun,” she said. “She would do really crazy things. She would see a dog tied outside of a store, waiting for their owner to come back, and she would get right down in front of the dog to say, ‘They’re never coming back.’ It was just so sick. It’s dark. But really funny.”She also acknowledged her mother’s alcoholism. “We named a cocktail at the bar for her. Actually, we named several for her,” Ms. Shields said, before getting serious about how much she missed her. She added that one reason she wanted to play the Carlyle was that it was a place her mother had taken her when she was young. “She would be really proud,” she said.With that, she launched into Mr. Dylan’s melancholy “Most of the Time.”Ms. Shields donned a cowboy hat to sing the Dolly Parton hit “9 to 5.”Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesMs. Shields, who appeared to have a cold, sounded a bit like Bob Dylan as her throat began to give out. She then moved into material about the trials and tribulations of being a wife tot Mr. Henchy, who was seated in the audience, and the mother of two teenage daughters, Rowan and Grier. While delivering Tina Dico’s “Count to Ten,” she apologized to a man seated close to the stage, who was catching much of her spit.Toward the end, she sang “Faith,” a 1987 hit by someone she knew, George Michael. She delivered the lyrics with conviction while also using the song to make a cheeky reference to the nights when she stepped out before the paparazzi in the role of the public girlfriend to Mr. Michael and Michael Jackson.After the applause, the fashion designer Christian Siriano offered a quick review: “She was great, even though she clearly has Covid.”Moments later, Ms. Shields emerged from her dressing room and went through some quick hellos with friends and well-wishers. A waiter asked her what she would like to drink. “Tequila,” she said, before moving to a corner table for a chat with a reporter.Told of Mr. Siriano’s thoughts, she said, “I don’t have Covid!” But she said she did have a respiratory ailment that had landed her in the hospital a few days before the show.Her vocal coach brought her cough drops. Publicists hovered. Ms. Shields explained that her cabaret show began taking shape in the spring. Working with the writer and director Nate Patten, as well as with the musical director Charlie Alterman, she said she wanted to put together an evening that would involve telling her own story truthfully while making it a source of comedy.Alan Cumming in the company of Ms. Dern.Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesShe was aware that this was a difficult moment to humanize the people who decided it was appropriate for her to appear in a movie at age 11 as someone whose virginity was auctioned off. Yet her mother was still her mother, and she loved her.“Ambivalence is where real life happens,” she said. “I mean, the point of it all is that we’re not one thing or the other. We’re human beings, and we’re fraught.”Ms. Shields was asked about her experience with Mr. Trump.“I was making some movie in the late-90s,” she said. “My phone rang and it was him. He said, ‘You and I should date. You’re America’s sweetheart, and I’m the world’s richest man. People will love it.’ At which point I stifled laughter and said, ‘Thank you, I’m very flattered, but I have a boyfriend and I don’t think he would appreciate me stepping out on him.’ And he said, ‘Well, I think you’re making a big mistake.’ I said, ‘Well, I’m going to have to take my chances.’”Did she not know that George Michael was gay? And did they really go on a date?“A few,” she said. “He was very respectful of my virginity.”“Read the book!” a publicist yelled, referring to “There Was a Little Girl,” the 2014 memoir in which she tells the tale.Ms. Shields added that, despite the appearance that her relationships with Mr. Michael and Mr. Jackson seemed merely for show, she had real bonds with both of them.“We had so much fun,” she said. “I wasn’t just a purpose, as a beard. It actually was more than that. The conversations, the fears, the discussions.”The talk turned to her podcast — in which she has spoken with Stacey Abrams, Rosie O’Donnell, Chelsea Handler and Kris Jenner — and the one person she has been itching to get: Britney Spears, who hasn’t given in an interview in years.“I tried very hard to find a way to be the first actual interview,” Ms. Shields said. “And I haven’t gotten it. But I am the only person who could do justice to the reality of the story. Whatever it is.” More

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    ‘Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields’ Review: Girlhood, Interrupted

    Lana Wilson’s documentary blossoms in moments of cultural commentary, where it builds a mood of reminiscence gone rancid.In the 1978 Louis Malle drama “Pretty Baby,” Brooke Shields plays a child whose virginity is auctioned off in a New Orleans brothel. She was 11 at the time of filming. That film’s title gets reappropriated in the director Lana Wilson’s absorbing documentary, “Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields,” which emulsifies its biography of Shields with lucid insights into the culture that shaped her.Posed before a calming gray backdrop, the 57-year-old Shields seems preternaturally well-adjusted and is an enthusiastic chronicler of her own career. But like many tidy celebrity portraits, “Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields” (on Hulu) hits its stride when cinematic memoir takes a back seat to cultural commentary.Before Shields even hit puberty, the media had taken to framing her as either a Lolita or a demure darling — a Catch-22 that Wilson, through interviews with journalists and other actresses, positions within a history of Hollywood exploitation. Trapped in this binary, Shields failed to crystallize her identity until college, and the film’s second half traces her road to self-realization thereafter.The documentary’s most absorbing ingredient by far is its excellent collage of archival footage. “I knew it was going to be done in good taste,” a precocious preteen Shields is shown to say of Malle’s film in an interview around its release. Assembled alongside analysis, this clip and others build a mood of reminiscence gone rancid and suggest a generation of women transformed by the prototypes society boxed them into.Pretty Baby: Brooke ShieldsNot rated. Running time: 2 hours 18 minutes. Watch on Hulu. More

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    ‘A Castle for Christmas’ Review: Deck the Halls With Expensive Tartans

    Charming locals in Scotland can’t save Brooke Shields and Cary Elwes from the script of this formulaic holiday rom-com.In “A Castle for Christmas,” the best-selling author Sophie Brown (Brooke Shields) had the gall to throw a favorite character down a staircase in her latest novel. Now her fans are furious. Even the talk-show host Drew Barrymore — played by the talk-show host Drew Barrymore — is critical of Sophie’s actions.After an on-air meltdown, Sophie heads for Scotland, in part to flee her readers’ ire, and in part to find writerly inspiration. Her father was a spinner of yarns, Sophie’s daughter reminds her on a video call. His vivid stories about a Scottish castle where his parents were groundskeepers were particularly rich.In Dunbar, at a quaint bed-and-breakfast, Sophie is welcomed by a kind group of locals who gather to knit. She also encounters Cary Elwes, who plays Myles, the duke of nearby Dun Dunbar castle. Thanks to his rambunctious dog, Hamish, he and Sophie meet cute in town. Impulsively, Sophie decides to purchase Myles’s castle and he becomes its cranky tenant with a plan to get the estate back.Likeable stars with little frisson, Elwes and Shields are also saddled with a formulaic script. It also doesn’t help matters that Elwes, whose last lead in a romantic comedy was “The Princess Bride,” does not look at ease. The supporting cast is more relaxed (particularly Andi Osho as Maisie, and Lee Ross as Thomas, Maisie’s former sweetheart and Myles’s servant). But no one’s happier for their close-up than the pup who portrays the dogged matchmaker. It’s tempting to say, he puts the ham in Hamish, but then isn’t that an Easter dish?A Castle for ChristmasNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More