With films such as "The City Neurotic", "Manhattan" and "Hannah and Her Sisters", Woody Allen (84) celebrated great international success as a director; his relationships with colleagues like Diane Keaton (74) and Mia Farrow (75) made headlines. The 84-year-old filmmaker released his memoirs on Monday. "Apropos of Nothing" comprises 400 pages and is available from Arcade Verlag.
Affair with the stepdaughter
In "Apropos of Nothing" the New York native looks back on his turbulent life. The focus of the memoirs is his controversial affair with Soon-Yi Previn (49). "At the beginning of our relationship, we were so keen that we could hardly keep our hands apart," Allen describes the liaison that caused a sensation in 1992 – Soon-Yi was 22 at the time, Allen 56 and married to Previn's adoptive mother Mia Farrow. In "Apropos of Nothing", however, the 84-year-old claims that he was already separated from Farrow when he got involved with the girl. In 1997 he married Previn, with whom he now has two children; she dedicated the book to everyone.
Allegations of abuse cost everyone the publisher
But above all, in his memoirs, Allen takes a stand on the allegations that his ex-stepdaughter Dylan Farrow (34) has made against him since the 1990s: Allen has sexually abused her several times. But Allen has always denied the allegations and does so in his book: "I never touched them", he writes, nor has he ever done anything that could be interpreted as abuse: "The whole thing was just from the start invented."
Farrow's accusations are apparently also the reason why Allen had problems finding a publisher for the book: Originally, the memoirs were supposed to be published by Hachette Verlag in early April, as the "Hollywood Reporter" reports. However, dozens of employees are said to have protested the publisher's decision, including Allen's son Ronan Farrow (32). It was his investigative research that uncovered the abuse scandal surrounding Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein at the end of 2017. The journalist has always supported his sister Dylan's allegations.