Woody Allen’s Former 16 Year Old Girlfriend Shares Her Story with THR
Babi Christina Engelhardt was 16 years old when she started an eight year secret love affair with then 42 year old Woody Allen. She isn’t complaining now, or calling out the director, she’s simply sharing her story about a sexual relationship that she says she initiated. And it’s a fascinating one.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Engelhardt reveals details about meeting the infamous filmmaker at the legendary New York City restaurant Elaine’s, spending time with him at his penthouse apartment, and sharing in threesomes with other women including Allen’s girlfriend Mia Farrow. Their relationship was secretive in nature, and at the time, exciting for her to be involved with a man she admired and respected. he discusses the unequal power dynamic between the two.
“What made me speak is I thought I could provide a perspective,” she told THR. “I’m not attacking Woody. This is not ‘bring down this man.’ I’m talking about my love story. This made me who I am. I have no regrets.”
Although Babi does not believe she is the sole inspiration for the movie Manhattan- she suggests that the role played by Mariel Hemingway is based on a composite of young women Allen was involved with, but that she definitely recognized pieces of herself and her relationship with Allen in the film. She was not flattered by what she saw. “I cried through most of the movie, the dawning of realization slowly settling in as my greatest fears crept to the surface,” she writes in a private memoir manuscript she shared with a THR writer. “How could he have felt this way? How was our partnership not something more than just a fling? We had shared such a special bond right from the start, something magical, and now here was his interpretation of me and us on the big screen for all to see in black-and-white. How could he deconstruct my personality and our life together as if it were just some fictional creation for art house fatheads to pore over?”
Allen isn’t the only powerful man she has been close to. She also reveals an array of relationships both professional and personal with brilliant or powerful or brilliant and powerful men and women including “jet-setting with Adnan Khashoggi, dining with Stephen King, working as a personal assistant to Jeffrey Epstein” and spending time as a “platonic muse” with another filmmaker who Allen admired but never met- Federico Fellini. She currently works as an assistant for producer Bob Evans.
Read the full interview at THR.com.