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| Mia Farrow’s son Ronan, photographed in 2011, graduated from Yale Law School and went on to work for the State Department under Hillary Clinton. |
Ronan Farrow has Woody’s wit and Sinatra’s charm
By Kate Storey
October 7, 2013 | 9:03pm
When Ronan Farrow was working on global youth issues for the State Department in Washington, DC, two years ago, he managed to find some free time for voice lessons.
In between trips to Afghanistan and Pakistan and reporting to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, he’d stop by the DC home of his voice teacher, Rebekah Eden, to practice his scales and even play around writing lyrics.
The handsome young man with bright blue eyes reminded Eden of a certain icon. The similarity was undeniable.
“He doesn’t sound like [Frank] Sinatra. No, that wasn’t my first sense,” Eden tells The Post. “But when I was watching him write lyrics, I felt like I was watching Woody Allen write a screenplay. There’s such a sharpness and quickness about him that I see.”
Ronan, now 25, has been all over the news since his mom, Mia Farrow, told Vanity Fair magazine that her son — thought to be her only biological child with Allen — was “possibly” Sinatra’s.
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| Selena Gomez cozies up to Ronan Farrow at his “ugly-sweater” birthday party last year in LA. |
The paternity bombshell was dropped last Wednesday, and Ronan handled the claim with humor, tweeting: “Listen, we’re all ‘possibly’ Frank Sinatra’s son.” (With nearly 10,000 retweets, media outlets called it the perfect way to handle the uncomfortable situation.)
That same day, the Hollywood Reporter broke the news that Ronan would be hosting a weekend show on MSNBC. (The network declined to comment on the report.)
So who is this young guy with the wit of Allen, the baby blues of Sinatra and a new highprofile TV gig?
Ronan is a modern-day Renaissance man. He’s a passionate humanitarian and activist, he’s worked in politics, he graduated from Yale Law School, he’s a Rhodes Scholar, he can sing and act, he’s writing a book about American foreign policy, and he’s hilariously tweeted about everything from the Emmys (“SPOILER ALERT: that girl you’ve never heard of from that show you don’t watch is wearing a dress”) to Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball” video (“Does Miley Cyrus just do demolition jobs or is she also available for insulation and drywalling?”).
Oh yeah, and he’s got a crew of celeb pals.
Last year, Ronan had a combined birthday party in LA with actress Shannon Woodward, who turned 28 two days before he turned 25 on Dec. 19. The party had an “ugly sweater” theme, and both Katy Perry and Selena Gomez showed up. He tweeted about the event: “We laughed. We cried. Shannon hit puberty.” (Ronan’s reportedly single right now.)
Ronan grew up with his actress and activist mom, Mia, in a loud, hectic household with 13 siblings. He spent his childhood on the Upper West Side and in the small town of Bridgewater, Conn.
Mia married Sinatra in 1966, when she was 21 years old. They divorced after two years. In 1970, she married composer André Previn, with whom she had three biological sons and adopted three daughters — including Soon-Yi Previn, who later married Allen.
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| Farrow says he’s learned a lot from ex-boss Hillary Clinton. |
Mia adopted two more children, then became pregnant with Ronan in 1987 while she was with Allen. (Dating for 12 years, they never married or lived together.) The name he was given at birth was Satchel O’Sullivan Farrow, after pitcher Satchel Paige — Allen was a fan. When Mia and Woody split, Ronan began going by the name Seamus, perhaps to distance himself from Allen. And eventually he changed his name to Ronan. (Mia once said “Seamus” was too hard for Americans to pronounce.)
While Mia was with Allen, she told Vanity Fair, she continued seeing Sinatra — hence the confusion about Ronan’s paternity.
Ronan’s relationship with Allen deteriorated when Mia found nude photos of her daughter Soon-Yi in Allen’s home in 1992. The couple split, and in 1997 Allen married Soon-Yi; they later adopted two daughters.
One nanny who worked for Mia recalls the topic of Allen being verboten when Ronan was growing up.
“Mia always said that Woody is Seamus’ [Ronan’s] dad. She never actually said Woody’s name, though,” the nanny, who asked not to be named, tells The Post. “She said ‘the bad man who we don’t talk about, who is not in our lives.’
“Seamus never talked about him.”
That animosity remains. In June, Ronan took a dig at dear old Dad on Twitter: “Happy father’s day — or as they call it in my family, happy brother-in-law’s day,” he wrote.
The nanny describes Ronan as being very close to his mom.
“Mia had this whole attic/bedroom suite upstairs where she stayed most of the time. I feel like Dylan [his adopted sister] and Seamus were up there with her a lot, and I was downstairs with the younger kids,” she says. “There was kind of a divide between the adopted kids and Seamus.”
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| Mia Farrow and Woody Allen with newborn Satchel (now Ronan) and Dylan in 1988. |
But Ronan describes his diverse crew of siblings, some of whom have special needs, as having a huge impact on who he is today. Growing up, he says in this month’s Esquire magazine, “In a sense, I had the world’s problems on my doorstep. And I had to figure out what I could throw at these problems. So there was always going to be some kind of a public-service piece in my future.”
Ronan and some of his siblings went to Montessori schools in Manhattan and Connecticut, Mia once explained in an interview with the Litchfield County Times. She said her son had skipped every other grade before entering college after the 7th grade.
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| Ronan and Mia Farrow |
Ronan was only 11 when he entered Bard College at Simon’s Rock in Great Barrington, Mass.
Twice a day, Mia had a driver make the 90-minute trip with Ronan to and from their Connecticut home to the university that specializes in high-school-age students — typically 16- and 17-year-olds.
“I just remember the way he talked. It was so precocious, and it was so above his age and past his years,” says the nanny, who was with the family when Ronan was attending college. “You could tell from such a young age he was really smart, but he was awkward. He was an old soul in a goofy little body. He was outgoing within the house and with his other brothers and sisters, but I don’t remember him socializing with anybody.”
Ronan graduated from Bard at 15 with a double major in philosophy and biology. He’s the school’s youngest graduate. A year later, he became one of the youngest students ever to enter Yale Law School, where he lived on campus. Ronan graduated in 2009 and later became a member of the New York Bar.
Since then, he has been active in politics and humanitarian issues in Africa and Asia: He’s been a UNICEF spokesperson, has traveled to war-torn Darfur and Sudan with his mom, and written op-eds for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times and The Atlantic. In 2011, he became the special adviser to the secretary of state for global youth issues, and worked closely with Clinton.
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| Mia Farrow and Ronan |
Ronan is also an in-demand paid public speaker, now represented by the Greater Talent Network, a speakers bureau that sends him out to colleges and corporations.
In 2011, Ronan returned to Massachusetts to speak to the Bard graduating class.
“He talked about his role with Hillary and about how young people can make a difference,” recalls Karen Anderson, associate director of communications at Simon’s Rock. “It was fun for them because he’s so close to their age — he was 23. He’s someone they could relate to, who went to their college, who had a career at 19. That really spoke to them.”
As if all that weren’t impressive enough, the 20-something was named a 2012 Rhodes Scholar — a prestigious award he shares with Bill Clinton, George Stephanopoulos and Cory Booker.
Back home from Oxford last year, Ronan made time for a fun side project. He voiced a character in the feature-length cartoon “From Up on Poppy Hill,” which was released in March.
“Here’s what I love,” says the film’s writer, Karey Kirkpatrick. “I didn’t know who he was and all of his accomplishments at a young age. I only knew his connection to his famous parents. But he didn’t bring any of that with him. He doesn’t wear it.”
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