Former Model Claims She Secretly Dated Woody Allen When She Was Only 16

BY Josiah HughesPublished Dec 17, 2018

Woody Allen hasn't exactly had the best press for the last few decades, and yet things continue to get worse for the filmmaker. Today, former model Babi Christina Engelhardt has revealed she dated the filmmaker in 1976, when she was just 16 years old.

Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Engelhardt revealed that she first met the director when she was 16 and he was 41. Though he didn't ask her age, Engelhardt did tell Allen that she was still in high school. The age of consent in New York at the time was 17. 

Engelhardt said their relationship quickly became physical. Over the course of their eight-year affair, she claimed she would meet Allen in his apartment. A year into their relationship, he would allegedly bring in other "beautiful young ladies" for threesomes. Then, four years into their relationship, he introduced her to his girlfriend, Mia Farrow.

Engelhardt said that she also engaged in threesomes with Allen and Farrow.

"It wasn't until after it was done when I really had time to think of how twisted it was when we were together," Engelhardt wrote in her unpublished memoir, as reported by THR. "And how I was little more than a plaything."

She added that her intention was not to bring down Allen. 

"What made me speak is I thought I could provide a perspective," she said. "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."

In preparation for the piece, Engelhardt rewatched Manhattan — a film where Allen's character maintains a relationship with a high school student played by Mariel Hemingway. She explained that she sees the character as a composite of the various young women Allen was dating in the 1970s.

She also responded to a Washington Post report that detailed Allen's lifelong obsession with young women.

"It put all of the dots together," she said of the report. "It made me realize that I was part of a pattern. I'd never been privy to his mind in that way."

Read the full Hollywood Reporter piece here.

 

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