Woody Allen couldn’t predict marriage

He says he’s absolutely never used drugs (“I can barely bring myself to take two Extra Strength Excedrin”), confesses he has no interest in travel, popular music, or technology, and cops to being a creature of habit: “When Elaine’s was open in New York, I ate every dinner [there], seven nights a week, for 10 [to] 12 years”. “I always had a small audience”.

“She enjoyed being introduced to many, many things that I knew from experience, and I enjoyed showing her those things”.

While Allen attributes age difference and paternal instincts to why their relationship has worked, Previn shares contradictory views.

“She deferred to me and I was happy to give her an enormous amount of decision-making just as a gift and let her take charge of many things”.

The Oscar-winning director went on to admit that their relationship works because of the age gap, claiming that Previn was looking for someone “paternal”. He says he thought his relationship with Soon-Yi “would just be a fling, it wouldn’t be serious”.

“I started the relationship with her and I thought it would just be a fling“. “You and I could be standing over [William] Shakespeare’s grave, singing his praises, and it doesn’t mean a thing”.

“It was just a good luck thing”.

Allen is aware of his shortcomings as a filmmaker, namely that he’s “lazy and an imperfectionist”, who lacks “intellectual depth” and prefers to go home at 6 pm to have dinner and watch a ballgame because filmmaking is not the “end-all-be-all” of his existence.

So we can distill two key pieces of dating advice from Woody Allen: (1) Wait until you’re around 35 years old to start dating and (2) Date women who are around 35 years younger than you are.

New family… Woody Allen poses with his wife Soon Yi and adopted daughters Bechet, left and Manzie in 2003. “That’s why I’m a big believer in luck. People did not come in great abundance and they still don’t, and I’ve maintained the same audience over the years”, Allen says.

The separation between church and state, artists and their personal lives – do you think the allegations [that you sexually abused your adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow, ] have affected how people approach your movies? And it’s not true there is anything from his private life resonating in his films. If the reviews are bad, they don’t come. “If I come out with a film they don’t want to see, they don’t come”. ‘Woody started taking her to basketball games, and Mia would reportedly tell her to stop dressing up for them as if she were going to a disco.’.