The Truth About Mia Farrow And Frank Sinatra's Marriage
When people consider Mia Farrow's controversial love life, it is often defined by her former partner, filmmaker Woody Allen. But before Farrow and Allen got together, Farrow had another contentious relationship with none other than classic crooner Frank Sinatra.
According to J. Randy Taraborrelli's book Sinatra: Behind the Legend, Sinatra and Farrow met in 1964 on the set of the movie Von Ryan's Express, when he was 49 years old and she was 19. As they sat down to chat, Farrow spilled the contents of her purse, which included a stale donut, a can of cat food, and her retainer, all over the floor. She was mortified, but he was charmed, and they soon started dating. According to Express, they got married in 1966 when he was 50 and she was 21. He wanted her to give up her acting career to be a housewife, but she refused and soon scored her star-making role in Rosemary's Baby, much to Sinatra's chagrin. He subsequently served her with divorce papers on the movie's set, in front of the cast and crew.
Although their marriage only lasted 18 months and did not exactly end on a high note, their friendship lasted a lifetime.
For Mia Farrow, Frank Sinatra was 'the love of my life'
As part of their divorce settlement, Frank Sinatra offered Mia Farrow roughly $800,000 as a pay-off, but Farrow declined. "I didn't accept one penny from Frank Sinatra," she said (via Express). "What I wanted was his respect and friendship."
As it turns out, Farrow got what she wished for in the end. Darwin Porter, who wrote the biography Frank Sinatra: The Boudoir Singer, told Express that Sinatra was a "father figure" to Farrow and that he was "always attracted to her" and "she meant a lot to him." Porter continued, "She never stopped loving him. It was a love affair that continued even after their divorce and they remained close till the end. She told friends that she was still very much in love with him."
When news broke of Farrow's then-husband Woody Allen's affair with her adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, Sinatra reportedly offered to have Allen's legs broken, or even to have him killed, according to The Daily Mail. Then, in 2013, Farrow suggested that her son, Ronan — whom Allen was presumed to have fathered — could really be Sinatra's. "We never really split up," she told Vanity Fair.
However, Sinatra died on May 14, 1998. "I loved him 'till the day he died and beyond," Farrow said of the singer in a 2017 interview with RTE Radio 1. "He was the love of my life."