Woody Allen is getting the cold shoulder from another actress Freida Pinto. She starred in his 2010 movie “You Will Meet a Tall, Dark, Stranger.”
Pinto says she’s sickened by allegations that Allen allegedly molested adopted daughter Dylan Farrow when she was 7 years old and has vowed never to work with him again.
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Dylan Farrow’s story triggered a blizzard of media coverage when mother Mia Farrow first lodged the charges in 1993 during a bitter custody battle. But the story faded into obscurity after a police investigation failed to turn up enough evidence to charge the famed director with child abuse.
After years of silence, Dylan laid out her experience in her own words for the first time in a haunting, first-person account published in a February 2014 edition in The New York Times.
The move re-ignited the controversy amid the burgeoning Hollywood sex scandals that led to the #MeToo movement. Dozens of women in all walks have come forward with experiences involving unwanted sexual attention.
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The 83-year-old director has strongly protested the allegations. He’s accused ex Mia of inventing the story to hurt his reputation. The couple broke up after Allen had an affair with adopted daughter Soon Yi Previn. They later married.
Woody Allen defended himself in a 2014 follow-up article, again in The Times, in which he strenuously proclaimed his innocence.
The allegations against Allen have driven a wedge in Hollywood.
A-list actresses like Kristen Stewart, Blake Lively and Scarlett Johannson continue to work with him. All three have come to his defense, or discounted the allegations.
Other actors, notably Susan Sarandon, Greta Gerwig, Colin Firth and Mira Sorvino have expressed remorse for working with him, or disdain over his behavior.
Pinto says she wants to show solidarity with those who have spoken out against the filmmaker and stated she’s sticking to what her “gut instinct” tells her.
“No absolutely not. I wouldn’t work with him because I’m in solidarity with women who have come out with their stories, whether they are proven or not. I’m just going to stick to what my gut instinct tells me,” she told London’s Guardian newspaper.
Meanwhile, Dylan has continued to tell her story, most recently in a January interview with Gayle King.
“I am credible and I am telling the truth and I think it’s important that people realize that one victim, one accuser, matters. And that they are enough to change things,” she said in the interview.
Through it all, Soon-Yi has been silent, until a recent New York magazine article. Needless to say, Soon-Yi’s recollections about life with Mia are starkly different than Dylan’s. She describes Mia as aloof, indifferent, scolding and not above playing favorites. She clearly wasn’t one of them.
She acknowledges that the trigger for the split between her adoptive parents were nude photos of her taken by Woody. Mia found them casually strewn on a fireplace mantle. Until then, their affair had been a secret. But Soon-Yi, now 47, insists she was 21 when their relationship began.
Soon-Yi was 10 when Allen and Farrow began dating. “Woody wasn’t interested in meeting us children. And the feeling was mutual,” she recalls. She says Allen was never a father-figure to her.
“We didn’t think of him as a father, and he didn’t even have clothing at our house, not even a toothbrush,” she recounts. She says they gradually grew together when they started spending more time together. We were like two magnets, very attracted to each other,” she says.
Oddly, Woody Allen’s relationship with her parallels a recurring theme in almost all of his films–a young woman invariably falling in love with an older man. Allen, at 82, is 35 years older than Soon-Yi.
For the full interview, check out New York magazine. See Dylan’s response below.