The Full Biography
Mia Farrow. Actress. The Hollywood daughter who cut her hair, played Rosemary Woodhouse, and spent the next half-century raising a house and arguing for children who were not famous.
This is her story.
The image most people still carry is a slight pregnant woman in a New York apartment, hair cropped, eyes asking a husband and a building a question she already knows the answer to. The year was 1968. The picture was Rosemary’s Baby. What the still cannot show is María de Lourdes Villiers Farrow of Los Angeles, daughter of Jane and of a director, a child who had already had polio, a television ingenue who married Frank Sinatra, and a woman whose most famous face was a climate, not a costume.
She was born on February 9, 1945, in Los Angeles, to Maureen O’Sullivan, the Jane of the Tarzan pictures, and John Farrow, the director. The household was Catholic, famous, and crowded. A childhood bout of polio put her in a ward and taught her, early, what a body could lose. That is the first pressure. The pretty daughter of a pretty star was also a girl who had watched other children not get up. She kept the seriousness. The town kept the cheekbones.
The door was television. In 1964 she was Allison MacKenzie on Peyton Place, the prime-time soap that made a weekly habit of other people’s secrets. She was nineteen, thin, and already a magazine object. In 1966 she married Sinatra. He was fifty. The marriage lasted two years and ended, in the public version, when she would not leave Roman Polanski’s picture to be on her husband’s set. He had divorce papers served on Rosemary’s Baby. She stayed. She finished the film. Vidal Sassoon cut the hair in a publicized session. The pixie was not a stunt beside the work. It was the work becoming a climate. Every young woman who cropped her head that year was, for a season, in her weather.
Polanski’s film is the civic object. Rosemary Woodhouse is a wife who is not believed. Farrow plays the disbelief as a physical fact: the appetite, the pain, the neighbors, the doctor, the last look into a black crib. Golden Globe nomination. BAFTA nomination. She was no longer Allison. Joseph Losey’s Secret Ceremony (1968), with Elizabeth Taylor and Robert Mitchum, put her in a stranger, crueler house. John and Mary (1969), opposite Dustin Hoffman, tried to make her a modern girl. Jack Clayton’s The Great Gatsby (1974) made her Daisy Buchanan, the voice full of money, in a picture the clothes remember better than the critics do. Death on the Nile (1978) put her in an all-star Agatha Christie. She could carry a period dress. She was still looking for the parts that used the seriousness the polio ward had installed.
Richard Fleischer’s See No Evil (1971) put her in a blind woman’s terror in the English countryside. Follow Me! (1972), released in America as The Public Eye, kept her in that English weather. Jack Clayton’s The Great Gatsby (1974) made her Daisy Buchanan, the voice full of money, in a picture the clothes remember better than the critics do. Death on the Nile (1978) put her in an all-star Agatha Christie. Robert Altman’s A Wedding the same year. Hurricane (1979). She could carry a period dress. She was still looking for the parts that used the seriousness the polio ward had installed. On Broadway, Bernard Slade’s Romantic Comedy (1979), opposite Anthony Perkins, proved the thin girl from Peyton Place could hold a stage without a close-up to help her.
She married the conductor André Previn in 1970. Twins, Matthew and Sascha, arrived that year. Fletcher was born in 1974. In those years the household also took in adopted daughters, among them Soon-Yi, Lark, and Daisy. The marriage ended in 1979. The children did not. From 1980 she was in a long personal and professional partnership with Woody Allen. She made thirteen of his pictures in a little more than a decade: A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy (1982), Zelig (1983), Broadway Danny Rose (1984), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Radio Days (1987), September, Another Woman, Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), Alice (1990), Shadows and Fog, Husbands and Wives (1992). The best of them — the waitress who walks into a movie screen; the sister who holds a family together — are the work. She is funny in them, and exact, and not the haunted girl from 1968. Widows’ Peak (1994) would show, after the partnership ended, that she could still own a frame without his camera.
In 1992 the partnership broke in public. Farrow learned that Allen had begun a relationship with Soon-Yi Previn, a daughter she had adopted during the Previn years. Soon-Yi and Allen married. Dylan Farrow, a young daughter of the household, alleged sexual abuse. Allen has denied it. He was not charged. A custody court gave the children to Farrow. A complete life holds Rosemary’s Baby and that household. This page does not retry the case. The children — among them Moses, Ronan, Dylan, and a large adopted family — are a fact. Columns about Ronan’s paternity are gossip, and gossip is not a filing.
Peyton Place made her a weekly habit before any film did. Allison MacKenzie, 1964 to 1966, a prime-time soap the country used as furniture. She was nineteen. Magazines treated the cheekbones as the story. Sinatra married her in 1966; he was fifty. He wanted her on The Detective. She stayed on Polanski’s set. The papers were served on Rosemary’s Baby. She finished the picture. Vidal Sassoon cut the hair in public. Rosemary Woodhouse — the appetite, the pain, the neighbors, the last look into a black crib — is the civic object. Golden Globe nomination. BAFTA nomination. She was no longer Allison. Joseph Losey’s Secret Ceremony (1968), with Elizabeth Taylor and Robert Mitchum, put her in a crueler house. John and Mary (1969), opposite Dustin Hoffman, tried to make her a modern girl. She kept looking for the parts that used the ward.
The 1970s are a working actress, not a climate. See No Evil. The Public Eye. The Great Gatsby. Full Circle, also called The Haunting of Julia (1977). Death on the Nile. Altman’s A Wedding. Hurricane. Avalanche. The voice of the unicorn in The Last Unicorn (1982). A turn in Supergirl (1984). On Broadway, Romantic Comedy with Anthony Perkins. Then the Allen years, thirteen pictures, one a year, a job: from A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy through Husbands and Wives. Zelig. Broadway Danny Rose. Radio Days. Alice. The Purple Rose of Cairo and Hannah and Her Sisters are the ones that last. After 1992: Widows’ Peak, Miami Rhapsody, Reckless, Coming Soon, The Omen remake, Dark Horse for Todd Solondz, 33 Variations on Broadway. The work did not stop because the household became a headline. UNICEF, from 2000, made the calendar humanitarian when the camera did not.
Maureen O’Sullivan was Jane in the Tarzan pictures. John Farrow directed. The household was Catholic, famous, and crowded. Polio put the daughter in a ward and taught her what a body could lose. André Previn married her in 1970; the twins and Fletcher and the first adopted daughters are that marriage. Soon-Yi is in that household before Allen is in the file. Fourteen children is the number the record keeps. A custody court, after 1992, gave the young ones to her. This page does not retry the case. The house in Bridgewater was the main production. UNICEF, from 2000, became the other one. Darfur and the briefing book are that job. Ronan became a journalist. Dylan and Moses have told their own versions of the household. Both versions are in the file. The cropped girl is not the whole life. The briefing book is. Connecticut is the address that remains. UNICEF is the calendar that remains. The house is still open.
That is the turn the tabloids prefer, and it is not the first turn. The first turn is 1968: she left Sinatra’s call sheet and Polanski’s camera made her a climate. The second is the long Allen collaboration, a working life of one film a year. The third is the house she kept after 1992, which is a family and a UNICEF schedule, not a closed set.
Six things most people never knew
- Polio is the first weather. A Hollywood daughter in a ward. The fragility people read as style had already been a hospital.
- She finished Rosemary’s Baby after Sinatra served the papers. The marriage ended on the call sheet. The picture did not.
- The Sassoon cut was done in public on purpose. 1968. A head became a climate. The performance is what made the cut last.
- The Previn years were already a large household. Biological sons, adopted daughters, Soon-Yi among them, before Allen was in the file.
- The Purple Rose of Cairo and Hannah and Her Sisters are the durable Allen work. A waitress who walks into a screen. A sister who holds the center. The collaboration was a job, thirteen times.
- UNICEF is not a ribbon. Goodwill Ambassador, Darfur, a public life spent on children who will never be billed above a title.
Fourteen children, biological and adopted, is the number the record keeps. Not all of them lived to middle age. The house in Connecticut was a working institution: meals, schools, adoptions, a mother who treated a large family as the main production. Ronan became a journalist. Moses has told his own version of the household. Dylan has told hers. Friends from the UNICEF years describe a woman who prepares a briefing the way she once prepared a scene. The advocate is not a second career pasted on a famous face. It is the seriousness the ward installed, pointed at a map.
The later years
After 1992 she acted when the part was worth the trip. Widows’ Peak (1994). Recurring television. A Broadway return in Fran’s Bed and, in 2009, Moisés Kaufman’s 33 Variations, in which she played a musicologist dying while chasing a Beethoven sketch — a part that used the seriousness instead of the cheekbones. The Omen remake (2006) put her in a nanny’s smile the horror audience already knew how to read. Documentaries and interviews asked her to be a witness. She answered when the sentence was hers to give. She did not sand the household into a press kit.
Home has been Connecticut — Bridgewater rooms, a working institution of meals, schools, adoptions — more than any studio. Fourteen children, biological and adopted, is the number the record keeps. Not all of them lived to middle age. Tam died in 2000. Lark in 2008. Thaddeus in 2016. The house held the rest: Moses, Ronan, Dylan, the adopted line that is a family and not a caption. In 2000 she became a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. Darfur, Chad, the Central African Republic, and other rooms the American entertainment press does not staff became a schedule. She wrote columns. She testified in the only court that would have her — public opinion, a hunger strike, a briefing book. The advocate is not a ribbon pinned to a famous face. It is the ward at nine, pointed at a map.
She is living. She is still an advocate. She has appeared when a part or a cause asked, and stayed off the red carpet when it did not. Darfur, in the middle of the 2000s, was not a ribbon week; it was trips, columns, a hunger strike, a public insistence that the map had children on it. Chad. The Central African Republic. Briefings prepared the way a scene used to be prepared. She has kept the Connecticut house as a working address. The cropped girl in the Dakota is a still. The woman with the briefing book is the life in progress. The UNICEF calendar is the job that replaced the weekly Allen shoot. The children who remain are the production she would not close.
After the spotlight moved
It moved from her face to her house, which is a hard relocation. Rosemary’s Baby still teaches a horror picture what a close-up can do. The Purple Rose of Cairo still teaches a comedy what yearning looks like in a cheap seat. Young actresses who crop a head and play disbelief are in her weather. The UNICEF work does not stream. It is the part of the file that will not fit on a poster.
She came out of a Tarzan household and a polio ward, played Allison, married Sinatra, finished Rosemary, wore Daisy’s dresses, raised twins and a long adopted line, made thirteen pictures with Allen, lost that household in public, kept the children the court gave her, and spent the next decades on a UNICEF calendar. If you only remember the cropped hair, you have the still. If you remember the ward, the papers on the set, the waitress who walked into the screen, and the briefing book, you have her.
Portrait: Andrew Lih · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons