Woody Allen accused of having eight-year relationship with teenage model Christina Engelhardt

'This is not 'bring down this man.' I'm talking about my love story. This made me who I am. I have no regrets,' said Babi Christina Engelhardt

A woman has spoken out about an alleged relationship with director Woody Allen that she claims started when she was 16, and he was 41.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Babi Christina Engelhardt claimed she first met the Annie Hall director in October 1976, in a New York restaurant, and that they swiftly embarked on what would become a clandestine eight-year affair. The legal age of consent in New York – then and now – is 17.

It is the first time Engelhardt has spoken publicly on the matter, but she said she unwilling to condemn Allen. “What made me speak is I thought I could provide a perspective. I’m not attacking Woody,” she said. “This is not ‘bring down this man’. I’m talking about my love story. This made me who I am. I have no regrets.”

According to Engelhardt, she was still living in New Jersey at the time with her parents, but was frequently in Manhattan to pursue her modelling career. She says Allen knew that she was still in high school, but never asked about her age. She describes the director as dictating the terms of their relationship from the beginning, with all talk of his work banned and their meetings only occurring in his apartment on Fifth Avenue.

She says she never pushed back against his alleged advances, adding: “I was a pleaser, agreeable. Knowing he was a director, I didn’t argue. I was coming from a place of devotion.”

Engelhardt considers herself a partial inspiration for Allen's 1979 film Manhattan, in which the director plays Isaac “Ike” Davis, a 42-year-old who sleeps with 17-year-old Tracey (Mariel Hemingway). Actor Stacey Nelkin is also said to have dated Allen when she was 17 years old, with Engelhardt saying she presumes the character of Tracey is a composite of several women. “I was a fragment,” she said. “Great artists cherry-pick.”

Engelhardt, 59, is now divorced and the mother to two university-aged daughters, working as an assistant to Chinatown producer Robert Evans.

In 1992, Allen’s former partner Mia Farrow contacted authorities after her daughter, Dylan, allegedly described sexual abuse by the director. Though Allen has repeatedly denied the allegations and was not criminally charged, Farrow was granted with full custody after a judge found Dylan’s testimony to be credible.

As the allegations have returned to the spotlight thanks to the #MeToo movement, Allen’s latest film, A Rainy Day in New York – starring Timothée Chalamet, Elle Fanning, Rebecca Hall, and Selena Gomez – has yet to receive a release date or any promotional material, despite having been picked up for distribution by Amazon. Reports have suggested it’s been shelved indefinitely.

Allen declined to comment on the story.

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