Andre Agassi was sweet but he was also "overbearing," a behavior noted by Brooke Shields' co-stars on the show "Suddenly Susan".
Editor's note: This article was originally published on July 17, 2020. It has since been updated.
Not all celebrity couples are able to handle the pressure of each other's fame and success. Some fizzle out and grow distant while some show their rage in explosive ways. At the end of the day, there is only regret left. Regret, for even having married each other. Brooke Shields' marriage to tennis star Andre Agassi was one of those celebrity marriages where they couldn't withstand the tests of time.
Agassi had filed for divorce 10 days short of their second wedding anniversary in 1999. They first met in 1993 after being introduced by a mutual friend, Lyndie Benson, wife of musician Kenny G, whom Agassi met through his pal Michael Bolton, as per USAToday. Benson had told Shields to send Agassi flirty faxes and the Suddenly Susan actress had done that. She would send "long heartfelt faxes when she was filming in South Africa," according to Tennis.com.
In 1994, he nursed her when she had a foot injury. He carried her from room to room so she wouldn't have to walk around in crutches and he also gave her the confidence to sever her professional ties with her mother and longtime manager, Teri. They had had a troubled relationship, as per People magazine. Despite their dedication to each other, eventually, that relationship unraveled as Agassi tried to claw back his position in the sporting world. From the rank of 114, he had reached no. 11.
He didn't want to be "Mr Brooke Shields" anymore. "That was not the reality of his life," said tennis journalist and Agassi's pal Peter Bodo. "Andre is not the hang-around-the-celebrity-wife kind of guy," he added. This, even though "Andre said he was energized by all her success," the journalist added.
As per Sports.ndtv, in her memoir, There Was a Little Girl, she wrote, "It hit me all of a sudden- I knew I had made a mistake. For the next two years, we saw very little of each other. I was working on my show, Suddenly Susan, and he was playing at various tournaments. He alienated me when he lost and was on to the next tournament after he won. We were drifting apart."
They decided to part ways since the Flower Shop Mysteries actress was not happy in the marriage and the sports star revealed to her that he had been "addicted to" narcotics since they started dating in 1993. She wanted to work things out initially but destiny had something else in mind.
"I was the one who had supported him unconditionally when he told me (after we started dating) that he was basically bald and had been wearing hairpieces most of his adult life.
Why would this have been any different? I would have been his biggest advocate and supporter," the memoir reads.
However, people who knew them saw how overbearing he could be. As per Shields' colleague on Suddenly Susan, he could be intimidating when he showed up on set. "Everything shut down, and everyone let them have their space," said Shields’s colleague, reports People. "Even when times were good, if she didn’t pay attention to him right away, there was a problem. He seemed pretty overbearing," they added.
Once, Agassi took matters to an extreme when he didn't like Shields' role on-screen. In 1995, before they were married, she shot a scene with Matt LeBlanc on the sitcom Friends, where she plays the role of a stalker. Agassi had been on the set and got angered by her licking the actor's hand. He flew into a jealous rage and stormed off, as per Daily Mail.
He told her that she "made him look a fool" in the scene with Leblanc and drove in his car from Los Angeles to his home in Las Vegas. "Upon arrival he systematically smashed and destroyed every single trophy he had won, including Wimbledon and the US Open, never mind all the others," she added.
There were red flags in the relationship right from the start and by the end, the couple had become so "incompatible in their tastes, natures, views, and dislikes…[that] a happy marital status can no longer exist," according to their court documents quoted by People.
The couple moved on eventually and both of them have been married for years. Agassi married Steffi Graff, also a tennis star, and Shields married Chris Henchy, a producer, in 2001.
References:
https://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/11/brooke-shields-andre-agassi-trophies-friends-joey-wimbledon
https://people.com/archive/cover-story-double-fault-vol-51-no-15/
