Woody Allen 'immune' to criticism over affair with former partner's daughter

Woody Allen has said he was “immune” to the criticism of his affair with Soon-Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of his then partner Mia Farrow, after their relationship became public in the 1990s.

In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Allen called Soon-Yi, now his wife, “one of the great experiences of my life” and said he had been able to transform her life after she was adopted as an abandoned street child in South Korea.

Farrow ended her long-term relationship with Allen in 1992 after discovering that he had been having an affair with Soon-Yi, whom the actress had adopted along with her former husband, the composer Andre Previn. 

Soon-Yi, now 45, later moved in with Allen - despite being 35 years his junior - and the pair married in 1997.

Asked by the Hollywood Reporter if he was traumatised by the scandal surrounding the matter, Allen, 80, replied: “Not at all.”

“I was immune, yes I was,” he said. “You can see I worked right through that, undiminished. Made films all through those years and at the same rate I was making them. I'm good that way. I am very disciplined and very monomaniacal and compartmentalised.”

He was dismissive of Farrow, with whom he said he was not in contact. “I don’t think she lives in New York. I think she lives in Connecticut. I’m not sure. Or travels for UNICEF or something,” said Allen, whose latest film, Cafe Society, is set to open this month's Cannes film festival.

Answering a question over how Soon-yi had changed him, the actor and director chose instead to describe how he had improved her life.

“She was an orphan on the streets, living out of trash cans and starving as a 6-year-old. And she was picked up and put in an orphanage,” he said. “I've been able to really make her life better. I provided her with enormous opportunities, and she has sparked to them. She's very sophisticated and has been to all the great capitals of Europe. She has just become a different person. So the contributions I've made to her life have given me more pleasure than all my films.”

Pushed on whether she had changed him, Allen said: “Changed me? I don't know if you could say she changed me. I might be the same person I was when I was 20.”

He said he was supporting Hillary Clinton in the forthcoming US presidential campaign, despite never having met her and liking Bernie Sanders, her Democratic opponent, “very much”. 

“I've met Trump because he was in one of my movies, Celebrity,” Allen said. “He's very affable, and I run into him at basketball games and he is always very nice and pleasant - hard to put together with many of the things he has said in his campaign.”