‘I was much older and she was an adopted kid’: Woody Allen admits his relationship with wife Soon-Yi Previn ‘looked exploitative'

Filmmaker is 35 years older than Previn, the adopted daughter of his former partner

Woody Allen has defended his marriage to Soon-Yi Previn, admitting that it “looked exploitative” to the “outside world”.

Allen, 84, and Previn, 49, got married in 1997. Previn, who was a college student when the pair’s relationship first began, is the adopted daughter of Allen’s former partner, Mia Farrow.

“I admit, it didn’t make sense when our relationship started,” Allen told the Mail on Sunday. “On the surface, we looked like an irrational match. 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. In the past, I had always gone out with actresses, but for whatever inexplicable reason, with Soon-Yi it worked.”

In a 2015 interview, Allen described his relationship with Previn as “paternal”.

He said: “I’m 35 years older, and somehow, through no fault of mine or hers, the dynamic worked. I was paternal. She responded to someone paternal.”

Allen also made headlines recently for claiming his estranged, adopted daughter Dylan Farrow’s allegation that he sexually abused her when she was seven years old was “false [but] a great tabloid drama”.