Woody Allen’s relationship with Soon-Yi Previn has been making headlines for nearly 30 years.
Soon-Yi is the estranged adopted daughter of Allen’s longtime partner Mia Farrow, whom he was with for 12 years and shared three children with.
The affair was discovered after Farrow found naked pictures of Soon-Yi in Allen’s apartment in 1992, according to ABC News. Soon-Yi was 21-years-old at the time.
She married Allen, her mother’s former lover, five years later in an intimate ceremony in Italy, The New York Post reported at the time.
What is Woody Allen & Soon-Yi Previn’s Age Difference?
GettyWoody Allen and Soon-Yi Previn in Paris in 1997
Woody Allen was born on December 1, 1935, which makes him 85 years old today, and 62 when he married Soon-Yi.
According to New York magazine, Soon-Yi’s exact age was unclear when she was rescued from the streets of Seoul, Korea, as a child. She has an estimated birth date of October 8, 1970, per a document signed by her adoptive parents Farrow and Andrew Previn.
Based on that birthdate, Soon-Yi turned 50 last fall and was 27 when she married the Oscar-winning director in 1997.
The Couple’s 35-Year Age Difference & Woody Allen’s History With Soon-Yi’s Mother Had Many People Confused By the Relationship
GettyWoody Allen and Soon-Yi Previn attend the premiere of “Cafe Society” hosted by Amazon & Lionsgate with The Cinema Society at Paris Theatre on July 13, 2016 in New York City.
When the future couple’s affair was first discovered, Spoon-Yi issued a lengthy statement to Newsweek to make it clear that the relationship was consensual and that she was never “raped, molested, and spoiled by some evil stepfather.”
“Please don’t try and dramatize my relationship with Woody Allen,” she said in the statement at the time. “He was never any kind of father figure to me. I never had any dealings with him. He rarely came to our apartment before his own children were born. I’m a psychology major at college who fell for a man who happens to be the ex-boyfriend of Mia. I admit it’s offbeat, but let’s not get hysterical.”
Allen later told New York magazine that many people were under the incorrect assumption that he was Soon-Yi’s father and that he “raped and married” her when she was “underaged.”
In a recent interview with The Daily Mail, Allen admitted that he could understand why some people misunderstood the relationship.
“On the surface, we looked like an irrational match,” he said. “I was much older and she was an adopted kid. It looked to the outside world that it was an exploitative situation — that I would exploit her as an older predatory male, and she would exploit me for whatever I had. That was never the case.”
The movie mogul told The Hollywood Reporter that having the opportunity to change Soon-Yi’s life has been more gratifying to him than any of his film achievements. He detailed his wife’s “difficult upbringing” in Korea during which she was an orphan roaming the streets until an orphanage picked her up at approximately age six.
“I’ve been able to really make her life better,” Allen said. “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. 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.”
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