The woman who claims to have inspired the film Manhattan is speaking out about her relationship with Woody Allen.
Babi Christina Engelhardt tells The Hollywood Reporter that she was a 16-years-old high school student when she began dating a 41-year-old Allen, saying that she actually made the first move by giving the director her number.
They were together for eight years she says, and around the time she was 20 Allen introduced her to his new girlfriend, Mia Farrow.
Soon after, according to Engelhardt, she began having threesomes with Allen and Farrow.
Engelhardt says she enjoyed Farrow’s company and the two would smoke joints and discuss astrology and animals, with the former model seeing Allen’s new girlfriend as a victim.
‘I felt sorry for Mia,’ says Engelhardt.
‘I thought, “Didn’t Woody have enough ‘extra,’ with or without her, that the last thing he had to do was to go for something that was totally hers?”‘
Shocking claims: Babi Christina Engelhardt (above in 2006) was with Woody Allen for eight years, and began seeing the director when she was a 16-year-old high school student
Groupo: Halfway through their time together the pair began having threesomes, and according to Engelhardt a ‘handful’ of these were with Mia Farrow (Farrow and Allen in 1983, around the time the threesomes stopped between the pair)
Celluloid tribute: She claims their relationship was the basis for the 1979 film Manhattan, starring Meryl Streep, Diane Keaton, Allen and Mariel Hemingway (above with Allen in the film) as his girlfriend
Engelahardt claims she had group sex with other young women that Allen brought in before being introduced to Farrow.
She also explains that she was resistant about being intimate with women, but grew fond of Farrow.
‘There were times the three of us were together, and it was actually great fun. We enjoyed each other when we were in the moment. She was beautiful and sweet, he was charming and alluring, and I was sexy and becoming more and more sophisticated in this game,’ says Engelhardt.
‘It wasn’t until after it was done when I really had time to think of how twisted it was when we were together … and how I was little more than a plaything.’
She adds: ‘While we were together, the whole thing was a game that was being operated solely by Woody so we never quite knew where we stood.’
Allen and Farrow both declined to comment.
At first, Engelhardt says she was upset to be meeting Allen’s girlfriend since she was under the impression that she was in a relationship with the director.
‘I felt sick. I didn’t want to be there at all, and yet I couldn’t find the courage to get up and leave. To leave would mean an end to all of this,’ she writes in a manuscript for her memoir, which she shared for the first time.
‘Looking back now, that’s exactly what I needed, but back then, the idea of not having Woody in my life at all terrified me.
‘So I sat there, patiently, calmly trying to assess the situation, trying to understand why he wanted the two of us to meet.’
Engelhardt also reveals that the only time she ever saw Allen show emotion was the day he received some devastating news from another ex, Diane Keaton.
‘It caught him off-guard,’ she recalls of the phone call from the Annie Hall star tellng him the cat they used to share had died.
‘He just sat there next to me and looked at his hands. They were trembling. In that moment he wasn’t even in the room.’
Allen was so aloof and disinterested in helping Engelhardt with her own career that he did not even realize that she booked work on his film Stardust Memories.
‘My dream was that he’d have seen me and pulled me out from the crowd,’ she said of her day working as an extra on the set of the 1979 film.
‘But I showed up with the crowd and left with the crowd.’
Her relationship with Allen was confirmed by her brother and the photographer she was with on the night she gave the filmmaker her number.