NEW YORK, May 4 (UPI) — When asked how marrying his wife Soon-Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of former spouse Mia Farrow, has changed him, Woody Allen didn’t have an answer.
But during his latest interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the famed director had much to say about how he has changed Soon-Yi.
“She had a very, very difficult upbringing in Korea. 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 began. “And so I’ve been able to really make her life better. I provided her with enormous opportunities, and she has sparked to them.”
“She’s educated herself and has tons of friends and children and got a college degree and went to graduate school, and she has traveled all over with me now,” Allen continued. “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.”
When asked to explain how she has changed him, he said he isn’t sure he’s changed at all. “I might be the same person I was when I was 20,” he said. “I’m not sure. I mean, I seem to have the same habits, the same work habits, the same phobias, the same enjoyments. I don’t think I have changed much over the years at all.”
Woody Allen and Soon-Yi Previn began their romantic relationship over 20 years ago after spending several years in a parent-child relationship as she was the adopted daughter of Allen’s then-wife, Mia Farrow. Last year, Allen told NPR he felt their relationship works because he is “paternal.”
“I was paternal. She responded to someone paternal. I liked her youth and energy. She deferred to me, and I was happy to give her an enormous amount of decision-making just as a gift and let her take charge of so many things. She flourished. It was just a good-luck thing,” he said at the time.
During the Hollywood Reporter interview, the longtime filmmaker also discussed his upcoming, still untitled television project with Amazon, saying doing a mini-series was “much harder” than he thought.
“But over the years, television has made enormous strides, and wonderful things are being done in television,” he said. “And I found as soon as I started to get into the project, I couldn’t bring myself to slough it off because it is not television of 50 years ago, where every silly thing was acceptable. You’re working in a medium that has grown up and has got wonderful things being done in it…”
