Michael Caine has said he will never work with veteran director Woody Allen again after hearing about sexual abuse allegations against the director.
84-year-old Caine, who won an Oscar for his role in Allen’s widely acclaimed 1985 film Hannah and Her Sisters was speaking to The Guardian newspaper.
Allen said that he was ‘stunned’ upon hearing accusations against the filmmaker after several actors and Hollywood figures condemned him following the Harvey Weinstein scandal.
Allen has continued to strenuously denied the allegations.
Michael Caine, left, has said he will never work with veteran director Woody Allen again after hearing about sexual abuse allegations against the director
Caine won an Oscar for his role in Allen’s film Hannah and Her Sisters, pictured
‘I’m a patron of the NSPCC and have very strong views about paedophilia,’ Caine said in reference to the UK’s National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
‘I can’t come to terms with it, because I loved Woody and had a wonderful time with him. I even introduced him to Mia Farrow. I don’t regret working with him, which I did in complete innocence; but I wouldn’t work with him again, no.’
Caine has thrown his weight behind the #MeToo movement, describing himself as a ‘fully paid-up feminist’.
‘I’m a feminist to the core. An interviewer once asked my wife, “What first attracted you to Michael?” and she said, “The way he treated his mother.” I respected women tremendously, right from the start. I just didn’t know I was a feminist until they invented it.’
Allen’s 32-year-old adopted daughter Dylan Farrow recently repeated her allegations against Allen when she appeared on the CBS Morning Show in January 2018.
She said that actors who work with the director should ‘acknowledge their complicity’ in perpetrating a ‘culture of silence in their industry.’
Woody Allen has been keeping a low profile since his stepdaughter Dylan Farrow, 32, went on CBS This Morning earlier this year accusing the director of sexually assaulting her as a child
Mia Farrow and Michael Caine are pictured at the 1979 People’s Choice Awards. Caine says he even introduced Farrow to Allen but would never work with him again
She went on to detail the alleged assault, saying: ‘I was taken to a small attic crawlspace in my mother’s country house in Connecticut by my father. He instructed me to lay down on my stomach and play … As I played with the toy train I was sexually assaulted.’
When aged seven, Farrow said Allen ‘touched my private parts’. During the new interview, she said: ‘As a 32-year-old: he touched my labia and my vulva with his finger.’
Allen responded to the allegations accusing his ex-wife and Dylan’s mother Mia Farrow of ‘relentlessly coaching’ her into thinking he was a ‘dangerous sexual predator’.
In a statement, the director said that an investigation occurred happened following the incident and that he was never charged. Allen then accused the Farrow family of ‘cynically using the opportunity afforded by the Time’s Up movement to repeat this discredited allegation’.
It comes after Allen’s adopted daughter Dylan Farrow (left) gave her first TV interview in Januarymonth saying she was telling the truth about being molested by him when she was seven
Allen has repeatedly denied the abuse claims made by Farrow and he was never charged
‘I never molested my daughter – as all investigations concluded a quarter of a century ago,’ Allen said. ‘When this claim was first made more than 25 years ago, it was thoroughly investigated by both the Child Sexual Abuse Clinic of the Yale-New Haven Hospital and New York State Child Welfare.
‘They both did so for many months and independently concluded that no molestation had ever taken place. Instead, they found it likely a vulnerable child had been coached to tell the story by her angry mother during a contentious breakup.’
Caine joins a growing number of actors who have appeared in Allen movies but who recently have distanced themselves from him, including Greta Gerwig, Mira Sorvino, and Colin Firth. Others have remained loyal to the director, including Alec Baldwin and Diane Keaton
Woody Allen’s new film Rainy Day in New York may not even make it to the big screen. Timothée Chalamet (above on set), one of the stars of the upcoming film, has already said he will donate his salary to charity
Actors Timothee Chalamet and Rebecca Hall both pledged to donate their salaries from their upcoming Woody Allen film A Rainy Day in New York to a handful of organisations including Time’s Up, the LGBT Community Centre and RAINN, a group that works against sexual violence.
‘It’s a small gesture and not one intended as close to compensation but I’ve donated my wage to @timesup,’ Hall wrote.
Chalamet said: ‘I want to be worthy of standing shoulder to shoulder with the brave artists who are fighting for all people to be treated with the respect and dignity they deserve.’