For years, Soon-Yi had simply been one of Mia Farrow’s daughters within the family environment she shared with Woody Allen. No one imagined how that story would end.
Mia had adopted Soon-Yi together with her then-husband André Previn. Later, she began a relationship with Woody Allen that lasted around 12 years; they had a child together, and he also adopted two of her other children. Although they never married or lived under the same roof, they were still a couple when the relationship between Woody and Soon-Yi began to come to light.
According to later testimony, Woody began a relationship with Soon-Yi when she was 21 and he was 56. Mia discovered what was happening in 1992 when she found intimate photographs of her daughter in the director’s apartment. Months later, Woody publicly acknowledged the relationship, saying that he was in love with her.
The story was even more tangled than it seemed. During the subsequent custody trial for their children, Woody admitted that he had told Mia that he had ended his affair with Soon-Yi when in reality he was still talking to her several times a day. He also testified that, after Mia discovered the relationship, he slept with her again in an attempt to calm the situation.
The scandal definitively ended the relationship between Woody and Mia. Five years later, in 1997, Woody Allen and Soon-Yi married in Venice and remain together decades later.
What began within the same family ended up becoming one of Hollywood’s most controversial and widely discussed romances.