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Mira Sorvino says her early career is ‘tainted’ by Woody Allen: ‘I should have denounced him’

Actor also told Marc Maron in an interview how she was blacklisted from Hollywood after rejecting the advances of convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein

Inga Parkel
Thursday 03 March 2022 22:42 GMT
Mira Sorvino says she's 'survivor of date rape'

Mira Sorvino has admitted that she feels her early career is “tainted” due to her work with director Woody Allen.

The actor starred in Allen’s 1995 film Mighty Aphrodite, a performance for which she won an Oscar and Golden Globe.

Despite feeling proud of her performance, Sorvino said she “should have denounced” Allen over the allegations that he molested his adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow.

“I have no doubt in my mind that she’s telling the truth,” Sorvino told Marc Maron on his WTF podcast, disclosing that she has since become friends with Farrow.

“I should have denounced him... I didn’t look deep enough to actually educate myself to really make an educated opinion at the time. It’s not an excuse.”

Allen has not been charged with any crimes and has always vehemently denied allegations that he molested Farrow, who claims the abuse took place in 1992 when she was seven years old.

“It’s so preposterous, and yet the smear has remained,” Allen said in a rare TV interview last year. “And they still prefer to cling to if not the notion that I molested Dylan, the possibility that I molested her. Nothing that I ever did with Dylan in my life could be misconstrued as that.”

Lisa Kudrow and Mira Sorvino at the 2022 SAG Awards (Getty Images)

Sorvino wrote an open letter of apology to Farrow in 2018, in which she said she had turned “a blind eye” because she didn’t want the allegations to be true.

“Just because he was as brilliant as he was… doesn’t mean he’s not a terrible person who hurt his daughter, who hurt a child. And there is no forgiveness for that,” she told Maron.

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The 54-year-old said this belief “ruins Mighty Aphrodite for me, ruins my Oscar performance, ruins that like start of my career because I treasured it for years”.

The Independent has reached out to Allen’s representatives for comment.

Later on in the interview, Sorvino discussed how she was blacklisted from major projects in Hollywood for 20 years by convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein, after repeatedly turning down his advances.

“[His harassment] took away my livelihood, my ability to feed my kids, and my ability to practise what I love, to fulfil my own personal destiny,” she said.

Weinstein was found guilty in 2020 of sexual assault charges, and sentenced to 23 years in prison.

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