Christina Engelhardt, Woody Allen’s Alleged Teenage Lover, Speaks Out in Tell-All Profile

After almost 30 years, Babi Christina Engelhardt, a former model who claims to have had an affair with Woody Allen, is speaking out about her relationship with the auteur. In an new profile in The Hollywood Reporter, Engelhardt revealed that she began having sex with Allen in 1976, when she was just 16 years old, and explained how the eight-year affair has left a lasting mark on her life. Engelhardt’s story bears a striking resemblance to the plot of Manhattan, Allen’s 1979 film about a 17-year-old girl who sleeps with Allen’s 42-year-old character, a fact that has left the model with conflicting memories about their unequal relationship.

Engelhardt told THR that she first met Allen in October 1976 at Elaine’s, a restaurant in New York City. The aspiring model left Allen a note with her phone number, and he called shortly after and invited her to his penthouse. Engelhardt reportedly told him “she was still in high school” and wouldn’t turn 17 — the legal age of consent in New York — until December; they began having sex a few weeks later. From there, the two began an eight-year relationship that Engelhardt claimed included “more than 100” meetings (always at his apartment), threesomes, and trysts with Allen’s then-girlfriend Mia Farrow.

“I was pretty enough, I was smart enough, I was nonconfrontational, I was non-judgemental, I was discreet, and nothing shocks me,” Engelhardt said of why Allen took to her. For the first few years of their relationship, the model was “a pleaser,” happily participating in threesomes with other “beautiful young ladies.” However, after about four years, Engelhardt was hurt when Allen said he wanted to introduce her to his new “girlfriend,” Mia Farrow. The model wrote in an unpublished memoir that she initially “felt sick” about the meeting, but a “handful” of threesomes with the couple changed her attitude towards Farrow.

Engelhardt wrote:

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. 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. 

By the mid-1980s, Engelhardt tired of the relationship, which she described as “a game that was being operated solely by Woody so we never quite knew where we stood.” She left New York and became part of Federico Fellini’s circle, a fact Allen told her was “so cool.” Engelhardt last heard from Allen in 2001, when he sent her a letter inviting her to meet Farrow’s adopted daughter and his current wife, Soon-Yi Previn. “I already had children then,” she explained. “Not that I’ve gone square, but my priorities were different. I just wanted to stay away from that.”

When she watches Manhattan now, 30 years after her relationship with Allen, Engelhardt said she feels conflicted. When she first saw it, she “cried through most of the movie” as she recognized herself in the story, but now, she believes that Tracy, the 17-year-old protagonist, is a collection of the many young woman Allen slept with. “I was a fragment,” she told THR. “Great artists cherry pick.”

While Engelhardt is ready to talk about her relationship, she’s hesitant to slam Allen for having sex with a minor or exploiting their dynamic. “What made me speak is I thought I could provide a perspective,” she told THR. “I’m not attacking Woody. This is not ‘Bring down this man.’ I’m talking about my love story. This made me who I am. I have no regrets.”

Where to stream Manhattan