Samantha Morton has said she has “no regrets” working with Woody Allen and that she remains “forever grateful” for the experience.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Morton, who worked on Allen’s 1999 picture Sweet and Lowdown, said: “I was working for a director who was kind, funny, and wonderful to work with. It changed my life. And I’m forever grateful for that.” In Sweet and Lowdown Morton played a mute laundry woman who falls for jazz guitarist Emmett Ray (played by Sean Penn); she was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar.
Morton said she didn’t have any regrets despite Allen facing accusations of abuse by his daughter Dylan Farrow that first emerged in 1992, and which the director denies. Morton spoke to the Guardian in 2014 about her experience of being abused a number of times while in residential care.
“I’m terribly sorry for the situation that is publicly known. It’s heartbreaking,” said Morton. “I was sexually abused. Some of the people that hurt me can’t be brought to justice for complications of time. I have full sympathy for anybody who says that happens to them, and it needs to be taken incredibly seriously.”
In the wake of Farrow’s allegations against Allen, a number of the director’s former collaborators – including Timothée Chalamet, Greta Gerwig, Colin Firth and Rebecca Hall – have publicly stated they would not work with him again. Allen launched legal action against Amazon after they shelved A Rainy Day in New York, a film he shot for the studio in 2017, and they cancelled their contract with him, citing Farrow’s allegations and Allen’s response to the #MeToo campaign.
However, a number of other actors, including Jude Law, Javier Bardem and Anjelica Huston, have defended their work with Allen and in Bardem and Huston’s case that they would be happy to work with him again.
Allen is currently shooting a film in Spain, provisionally entitled Rifkin’s Festival, starring Christolph Waltz, Gina Gershon and Elena Anaya, saying: “I never think of retiring.”
