Mira Sorvino Says She Will Never Work With Woody Allen Again

Mira Sorvino said she will never work with Woody Allen again in an open letter to Dylan Farrow on [...]

By Daniel S. Levine

Mira Sorvino said she will never work with Woody Allen again in an open letter to Dylan Farrow on Wednesday.

The 50-year-old Sorvino apologized to Farrow for appearing in Allen's Mighty Aphrodite, the 1995 film that earned her an Oscar. She was among the first actresses to speak out against Harvey Weinstein, telling Farrow's brother, journalist Ronan Farrow, in The New Yorker, that she was blacklisted after rejecting the producer's advances.

"I confess that at the time I worked for Woody Allen I was a naive young actress," Sorvino wrote to Farrow on The Huffington Post. "I swallowed the media's portrayal of your abuse allegations against your father as an outgrowth of a twisted custody battle between Mia Farrow and him, and did not look further into the situation, for which I am terribly sorry. For this I also owe an apology to Mia."

Sorvino said Allen never overstepped his "bounds with me," adding, "I never personally experienced what has now been described as inappropriate behavior toward young girls. But this does not excuse my turning a blind eye to your story simply because I wanted desperately for it not to be so."

After telling Ronan Farrow about her own experiences with Weinstein, Sorvino wrote that she asked the journalist about Farrow's experience with Allen. Farrow has claimed that Allen molested her when she was seven years old.

The allegations were first publicly reported in 1992, when Allen split from Mia Farrow. Farrow opened up the allegations again in a February 2014 open letter in the New York Times. In December, Farrow wrote another op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, asking why the #MeToo movement hadn't impacted Allen in the way it did for Weinstein. Allen has long denied her claims.

"We are in a day and age when everything must be re-examined. This kind of abuse cannot be allowed to continue. If this means tearing down all the old gods, so be it," Sorvino wrote to Farrow. "The cognitive dissonance, the denial and cowardice that spare us painful truths and prevent us from acting in defense of innocent victims while allowing 'beloved' individuals to continue their heinous behavior must be jettisoned from the bottom of our souls."

"Even if you love someone, if you learn they may have committed these despicable acts, they must be exposed and condemned, and this exposure must have consequences. I will never work with him again," Sorvino continued.

At the end of her letter, Sorvino called Farrow a "true hero."

"I am overwhelmed and my gratitude to you cannot be expressed sufficiently in words," Farrow tweeted in response. "This letter is beautiful and I will carry your words with me. Your courage has been boundless and your activism an example for us all. From the bottom of my heart, thank you."


Since the #MeToo movement started, some actors have vowed to never work with Allen again, including Lady Bird director Greta Gerwig.

Photo credit: Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images

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