Woody Allen is possibly the only person who could describe the moment when his ex-lover found naked pictures of her adopted daughter as "fortuitous."
But if that’s what it takes to get people to go and see his new film, then that’s what he’ll say.
Woody Allen is currently busy promoting Match Point, his latest London-based
film. Match Point doesn’t get released until next year in the UK, but
that’s not going to stop Woody from splurging his private life all over
the pages of Vanity Fair magazine.
Allen turns 70 on December 1st, and his interview with Vanity Fair
looks like it’s the ‘old man looking back at his life’ interview. Woody
addresses all kinds of subjects, such as his career – for which he
grades himself a B. He worries, for instance, that he’ll never make a
film as good as Ingmar Bergman‘s The Seventh Seal:
"I feel that level of greatness is not in me. It may just not be in the genes, or I just don’t have the depth of humanity to do that."
But
nobody cares about his films any more, not when he could be talking
about his 1992 affair with Soon-Yi Previn, his ex-lover Mia Farrow‘s adopted
daughter. Luckily, Woody doesn’t disappoint here, either. Speaking of
the time when Farrow discovered naked photos of Soon-Yi in Allen’s
apartment, he says it was:
"one of the fortuitous events, one of the great pieces of luck in my life. If somebody told me when I was younger, ‘You’re going
to wind up married to a girl 35 years younger than you and a Korean,
not in show-business’… I would have said ‘You’re completely crazy’."
But, hey, Woody Allen is almost 70. He must be filled with the wisdom of experience by now, right?
"All the crap they tell you about… getting joy and
having a kind of wisdom in your golden years – it’s all tripe. I’ve gained no insight, no mellowing. I would make the same mistakes again."
All the mistakes, Woody? Even The Curse Of The Jade Scorpion?
Read more:
Woody Allen: older but not wiser – BBC
[story by Stuart Heritage]
Rick says
Interesting you should refer to Farrow as Allen’s ex-wife, seeing as they were never married.
Mia’s husband Andre Previn was Soon-Yi’s father, not Allen.
Curse of the Jade Scorpion was pretty good actually. Now, Hollywood Ending, that was a mistake.
hecklerspray says
Doh! Right you are. Consider us admonished.
Hollywood ending was the one with Debra Messing in it, wasn’t it? Yeah, that was a mistake too…
Rosemary's Baby says
Calling Mia his wife is closer to the mark than the way Woody calls her a “girlfriend”. They were together for over a decade, had three children together, two adopted and one biological. The latter now refuses to have anything to do with Dad because Dad left Mum for big sister, Soon Yi.
The point being, I notice a lot of people downplay the humiliation and misery he (and Soon Yi) caused not only Mia but his kids too.
The biological one (supposedly something of a child prodigy, btw) doesn’t think his parents weren’t in a *real* relationship because they were not married. He doesn’t think Soon Yi was *only* adopted by his mother and therefore not *really* his sister.
Granted that sorting the Farrow clan out is pretty confusing, but people always seem to gloss a hell of a lot over in their eagerness to defend Woody.
(Getta load of his ludicrous and insensitive claim that he “considered” trying to cast Mia to play the Helena Bonham Carter role in “Mighty Aphrodite”. Anyone who has seen the movie will know what I mean.)