Woody’s Women
On the occasion of his 11th showing at the Cannes Film Festival—Midnight in Paris, starring Rachel McAdams—Woody Allen reflects on 40 years of movie muses.
“I’m crazy about Rachel,” said Allen of the star of this year’s Midnight in Paris. “I have great adoration and lust and interest in all of the women in my films. It would thrill me to go out with all of them.”
“I wanted to work with Naomi Watts for a long time,” the director said of his leading lady in You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (Cannes 2010). “She was very funny and very sexy.”
“I didn’t know Penélope from a hole in the wall,” Allen said of the star of Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Cannes 2008). “But when she came into my screening room, I was stunned: She was even more beautiful than in the movies. I wrote the part for her, and I never saw anyone else.”
“For years, I loved Téa Leoni from Flirting With Disaster,” said Allen. “I’m very critical of my own work, but Hollywood Ending [Cannes 2002] did not get the audience it deserved.”
“My first real make-out session in my life was with Woody in a hansom cab in front of a camera crew,” said Hemingway of her pivotal moment in Manhattan (Cannes 1979) at age 16. “After we had done the scene once, I said to the cinematographer, ‘We don’t have to do that again, do we?’”
