NY- Woody Allen says he has no regrets about his life, and actually cherishes the moment former lover Mia Farrow discovered secret nude photos he’d snapped of her 21-year-old adopted daughter – and his future bride.
“[It was] one of the great pieces of luck in my life,” the filmmaker tells December’s Vanity Fair in a rare interview. “It was a turning point in my life for the better.”
But Allen, who turns 70 next month, admits that because of their extreme age difference, his relationship with wife Soon-Yi Previn – now 34 – has “a more paternal feeling to it.”
“If somebody told me when I was younger, ‘You’re going to wind up married to a girl 35 years younger than you and a Korean, not in show business, not having any real interest in show business,’ I would have said, ‘You’re completely crazy,’ ” Allen says.
At the height of his chutzpah, Allen even tried to hire Farrow after the Soon-Yi nudie-photo scandal exploded and she dumped him.
“I was making ‘Mighty Aphrodite’ right after [the scandal]. We couldn’t think of an actress to play my wife . . . And I said [to the casting director], let’s get Mia,” he recalls.
“[She said], ‘What are you, nuts? . . . You must be kidding.’ I’m just not the kind of person that thinks: ‘Well, you did a terrible thing to me in my life, and so I’m not working with you.’
“I’m not going to cut off my nose and spite my face. I mean, there’s a line that you draw. I wouldn’t put, you know, Her-mann Goering in a part, but short of Nuremberg crimes . . .”
But the dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker admits that the 1992 bust-up with Farrow and the subsequent child sex-abuse charg-she fired at him involving their adopted daughter, Dylan, then 7, have taken their toll.
He doesn’t see any of his three kids with Farrow – Dylan and Moses, then 14 and also adopted, and their biological son, Satchel, then 4 – and feels “terrible about it . . . I spent millions of dollars and fought in court for years to do it, but could not swing it.”
Despite all the drama, the Woodman insists his life is dull.
“My shrink said to me a long time ago, ‘When you came here, I thought it was going to be extremely interesting and kind of fascinating, but it’s like, you know, listening to an accountant or something,’ ” he says.
“I’ve never had a puff of marijuana. I’ve never had cocaine. I’ve never had speed. I’ve never had heroin. I’ve never had a sleeping pill. I don’t have drug curiosity.
“I don’t have travel curiosity. I don’t have any curiosity. That’s part of my symptoms. It’s kind of a low-level depression.”
Allen also says that despite what anybody says, getting old is a drag. “Aging is a terrible thing . . . It’s just all bad news. You deteriorate physically and die,” he complains.
He adds, “I’ve gained no wisdom, no insight, no mellowing. I would make all the same mistakes again, today.”