It's been 46 years since Brooke Shields starred in the movie The Blue Lagoon with Christopher Atkins.
The cult classic film, about shipwrecked teens Richard (Atkins) and Emmeline (Shields), who fall in love while trapped alone on a tropical island, heavily showcased the young actors’ onscreen chemistry. But the director of the movie wanted even more.
During a recent interview on the Media Path podcast, Atkins, now 65, recalled working with Shields, who was 15, three years his junior when they made the 1980 movie.
“She was great,” Atkins recalled of the actress and model. “I can't say enough good things about her. She was great. She turned 15 on the island. I mean, we kind of had a little romance in the beginning. And the director wanted us to have romance so it would show up on film.”
Atkins recalled that the film’s director, Randal Kleiser, tried to push a romance between him and Shields, and actually went to great lengths to do so.
“He actually…I first got there, I lived on a ship because I had no place on the island. So I was in a ship for two weeks offshore,” Atkins shared. “He had put a picture of Brooke over my bunk on the boat so I would look at her every night before I went to sleep so I would fall in love, so it would show up on film. And yeah, we did have a little a little romance and everything on the island, but it was very innocent and sweet and yes, of course, I was very protective of her and a lot of these things.”
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Atkins previously spoke about the attempt at an off-camera Blue Lagoon romance in an interview with Woman’s Day.
“Randal, our director, wanted us to have a ‘puppy [love] romance’ to get a real vibe for the movie, so he cheekily taped a photo of Brooke over my bed,” he said in 2025.
It was Shields, especially, who wasn’t having any of it.
“They wanted us so desperately to fall in love with each other,” Shields recalled on an episode of her Now What? podcast. “I did not react well being forced into feeling anything. I hadn’t even kissed anybody by that age.”
She also wasn’t thrilled over wearing "little strips of clothing," and worse, the nude scenes that featured Atkins.
"I was like, 'Oh God, why do I have to look at this?'" Shields said. "'I've never seen one of those before, and I'm not going to start now!'"
Actors Christopher Atkins and Brooke Shields in the 1980 film, Blue Lagoon. (Bettmann / Getty Images)Bettmann / Getty Images
Atkins auditioned against 4,000 other men for the starring role in The Blue Lagoon. Despite his lack of film experience at the time, he ultimately landed the role because Kleiser liked his look in a loincloth.
“[He] said I had the right look and physique,” Atkins told Woman’s Day. “Randal envisaged a tanned Adonis with blond curly hair.”
Casting the popular Shields was a no-brainer. Not only was she one of the top teen models at the time, but she already had acting experience in the moviesPretty Baby, Wanda Nevada, Tilt, and more.
Years later, Shields shared that she was bothered by some aspects of The Blue Lagoon.
In the 2013 documentary Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields, she accused the movie's producers of trying to exploit her as a young teen.
"They wanted to sell my actual sexual awakening," Shields said. "The irony was, I wasn’t in touch with any of my own sexuality."
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