Woody Allen has never been concerned about age gaps — whether that’s in his movies or in his real life.
“I mean, my first wife [Harlene Rosen] was about three years younger than me,” Allen, 89, told the Times in an interview published on Sunday, September 14. “My second wife [Louise Lasser] was a couple years younger. [Diane] Keaton was the same. It was nothing I thought about.”
Allen is currently married to Soon-Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of his ex-girlfriend Mia Farrow and Andre Previn. Though Allen never formally adopted Soon-Yi, 54, the BBC reported Soon-Yi was 16 when she met the director, who was 51 at the time.
Age gaps in relationships have also been a hallmark of Allen’s work. He directed 1979’s Manhattan, starring himself as a middle-aged man who dates a 17-year-old girl, played by Mariel Hemingway.
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Elsewhere in the interview, Allen addressed he and Soon-Yi’s apparent friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. Despite letters allegedly written from Allen to Epstein in which the director compared the late financier to Dracula (and wrote of the “three young female vampires who service the place), he insisted that the pair weren’t very close.
(Epstein was arrested on federal charges in 2019 for the sex trafficking of minors in Florida and New York. He was found dead in his New York jail cell on August 10, 2019. A medical examiner ruled that he died by suicide.)
“Someone, a publicist, invited Soon-Yi and me to a dinner at Jeffrey’s house with one of those British royals. I can’t remember the name because I don’t follow the royals with any interest at all,” Allen said.
The royal in question is later revealed to be Prince Andrew, who he said Soon-Yi “wanted to meet.”
“There were about twenty people there, and we knew a lot of them from showbusiness. I don’t want to say who,” Allen added. “We didn’t know Jeffrey at all then, but we see all these people there and they all embraced him, so we figured, ‘OK, he’s a substantial character.”
Allen also claimed he didn’t know Epstein was a sex offender when the pair met at his home.
“He told us he’d been in jail and that he had been — I can’t remember the word — but that he’d been falsely put in jail in some way,” he explained “He told us he was trying to make up for it now by being philanthropic and giving money to cutting-edge scientists and universities. He couldn’t have been nicer.” (In 2008, Epstein was arrested and charged with sexual assault. He was later handed down a lesser sentence, often referred to as a “sweetheart deal,” and was released after 13 months.)
Allen and Soon-Yi became frequent guests of Epstein’s.
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“We would go and there was always a table of illustrious people, college professors, scientists, Nobel laureates — accomplished people who were fun to listen to,” he added. “On one occasion he had an evening of comedians and another time it was an evening of magicians. David Blaine was there and he was swallowing live goldfish and then regurgitating them. We never, ever, saw Jeffrey with underage girls. He always had a girlfriend but never an underage girlfriend.”
If you or someone you know have been sexually assaulted, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
