As the daughter of Australian-born movie director John Farrow and Irish-born actress Maureen O'Sullivan, Mia Farrow could have been just another Hollywood kid with an "in" to get into the movies. The attitude that she was just that changed when people actually saw her act.
Rosemary's Baby, the groundbreaking horror movie from 1968, established Ms. Farrow as an actress to be reckoned with, and her next movie, 1969's romantic drama John and Mary (with Dustin Hoffman), solidified her place in Hollywood.
The seventies found her doing theater work, such as playing the lead role in a 1972 production of J.M. Barrie's Mary Rose and then the role of Irina in a 1973 production of Anton Chekhov's The Three Sisters. She reached a pinnacle of movie success in 1974 playing Daisy Buchanan in Jack Clayton's version of The Great Gatsby, starring Robert Redford in the title role. It also earned her a first some might find dubious; she was featured on the cover of the very first edition of People magazine.
Though she ended the seventies with something of an embarrassment - playing the role originated by Dorothy Lamour in a 1979 version of Hurricane, which was, ahem, not a success - Ms. Farrow would find herself in the perpetual company of actors in movies directed by a new man in her life . . . Woody Allen. She was in just about every movie he directed from 1982 to 1992, and aficionados of American cinema refer to the 1980s as the Woody and Mia Decade, and for good reason. In a decade dominated by action movies and frat-boy flicks out of Hollywood, the movies the pair made together in New York were among the most literate and complex films of the period. Her standout roles were as an outer-borough Italian-American bottle-blonde in Broadway Danny Rose (1984) and the title role in the relationship comedy-drama Hannah and Her Sisters (1986).
Alas, all good things must come to an end, and a scandal involving Allen - you know the details, I won't repeat them - separated the two for good. Ms. Farrow went on to make other notable movies, such as 1994's Widows' Peak, which saw her play a vengeful matriarch in a small Irish village,and the 1995 comedy Miami Rhapsody as a thirtysomething single woman's mom.
She has worked steadily since the mid-nineties in film, theater and television, and she's also been involved in humanitarian causes, such as advocating human rights in Africa, awareness fighting the polio afflicting children in the Third World, and speaking out against genocide in Darfur. One of her biggest legacies may be her son, Ronan Farrow, who has become the leading sexual-harassment investigative journalist of his day. Like his mom, he's overcome charges against being a celebrity kid with an 'In" and has cultivated a reputation of his own.
Fun fact 1: Her two husbands were Frank Sinatra, then pianist André Previn.
Fun fact 2: She was at the same ashram of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi as the Beatles. Her siblings John and Prudence were there with her, and John Lennon wrote the Beatles song "Dear Prudence" based on her sister's heavy preoccupation with meditation.
She has worked steadily since the mid-nineties in film, theater and television, and she's also been involved in humanitarian causes, such as advocating human rights in Africa, awareness fighting the polio afflicting children in the Third World, and speaking out against genocide in Darfur. One of her biggest legacies may be her son, Ronan Farrow, who has become the leading sexual-harassment investigative journalist of his day. Like his mom, he's overcome charges against being a celebrity kid with an 'In" and has cultivated a reputation of his own.
Fun fact 1: Her two husbands were Frank Sinatra, then pianist André Previn.
Fun fact 2: She was at the same ashram of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi as the Beatles. Her siblings John and Prudence were there with her, and John Lennon wrote the Beatles song "Dear Prudence" based on her sister's heavy preoccupation with meditation.
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