Model and actor Christina Engelhardt has come forward to tell her story, a story that claims she had an intimate affair with Woody Allen.

Engelhardt, who is currently working as an assistant to producer Robert Evans, claims she met Allen in the October 1976 and began what would become an eight-year secret relationship with Allen.

The former model also claimed that at the time of the affair she was 16, months younger than the legal age of consent of 17 in New York state. Engelhardt, who told her story through the Hollywood Reporter, also included a note from her final contact with Allen, it read: “I hope you’re happy and well. I recall our times together fondly. If you’re ever in New York I would love you to meet my wife — she’d like you. We get out to California every so often. If you’d like I’d call and perhaps we could all get together.”



The revelation comes at a time when Allen’s future in film looks in severe doubt as Amazon shelve his latest project amid repeated allegations of sexual assault made by the director’s daughter, Dylan Farrow.

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In what is the first time Engelhardt has spoken publicly of the alleged relationship, she was quick to assert her desire that she is not doing so to condemn the director. “What made me speak is I thought I could provide a perspective. I’m not attacking Woody,” she said. “This is not ‘bring down this man’. I’m talking about my love story. This made me who I am. I have no regrets,” she added.

Engelhardt then goes on to detail her alleged relationship with Allen, explaining how she used to commute from her parents home in New Jersey into Manhattan in a bid to kickstart the beginning of her modelling career. She continued to explain that her alleged meetings with Allen would only take place in his apartment on Fifth Avenue and, according to Engelhardt, Allen knew she was in high school but decided not to ask for her specific age. Despite this, she claims she never refused his advances: “I was a pleaser, agreeable. Knowing he was a director, I didn’t argue. I was coming from a place of devotion.”

Alluding to the nature of their relationship, Engelhardt explained that she acted as Allen’s Muse and believes that she is part inspiration for the director’s 1979 film Manhattan in which Allen’s 42-year-old character sleeps with 17-year-old.

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