Meet Ronan Farrow, the 31-year-old son of Mia Farrow and Woody Allen who graduated college at 15 and helped expose Harvey Weinstein
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Ronan Farrow's new book, "Catch and Kill," is set to be released on Tuesday. It tells the story behind his Harvey Weinstein exposé.
It's the latest accomplishment in the 31-year-old Hollywood progeny's short — but eventful — life so far, which also includes graduating college at 15 and winning a Pulitzer.
Ronan Farrow's new book on the Harvey Weinstein scandal is set to be released on Tuesday, and it's just the latest highlight in the 31-year-old's accomplished life.
Born to parents Mia Farrow and Woody Allen, Ronan has always lived in the limelight, but as an adult he has come out from behind his parents' shadows to make a name for himself as a journalist.
Ronan was a wunderkind, graduating college at the age of 15 and winning a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship. He's also anchored his own TV show and written for numerous outlets.
Here's how Ronan reached where he is now.
Ronan Farrow was born Satchel Ronan O'Sullivan Farrow on December 19, 1987. Even at birth, he was in the spotlight, thanks to being the son of director Woody Allen and actress Mia Farrow.
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Ronan was named after Hall of Fame pitcher Satchel Paige. While he was known as Satchel as a child, he later went by the nickname Seamus, and eventually his middle name. Ronan's parents had been together for nearly a decade when they had him, and he was their only biological child.
Victor Crawshaw/Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix/Getty Images
Source: The New York Times
Farrow and Allen started dating in 1979 and collaborated on 13 films together over 10 years. But they never got married and maintained separate residences across Central Park from each other. Four years after Ronan's birth, Allen legally became father to two of Farrow's adopted children, Moses and Dylan.
Diane Freed/Hulton Archive/getty Images
Ronan's family was thrust further into the spotlight in January 1992, when his mother discovered nude photos of her 21-year-old adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, at Allen's apartment, leading to the couple's break-up and a nasty custody battle.
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Soon-Yi was Farrow's adopted daughter with her ex-husband, the conductor and composer Andre Previn. Following the scandal, Soon-Yi and Allen eventually got married and adopted two children of their own.
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Allen and Farrow's custody battle further escalated seven months later, when Allen was accused of molesting 7-year-old daughter Dylan.
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Source: The Outline
Allen was never charged with a crime, but he lost custody of Ronan and his two adopted children. Farrow largely raised her family at her home in Bridgewater, Connecticut.
Rick Maiman/Sygma via Getty Images
To this day, Ronan does not have a close relationship with his father. Ronan told The Hollywood Reporter in 2018 that he has had contact with his father "over the years, but he is not someone that I keep up with regularly."
Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images
Sources: The Hollywood Reporter, The Wrap, People
Ronan has been open about his opinion of Allen and Previn's relationship, calling it "such a moral transgression." And he publicly voiced support of his sister Dylan when she renewed her allegations against Allen in the wake of the #MeToo movement.
AP/Fritz Reiss
Sources: The Hollywood Reporter, The Wrap, People
A precocious child, Ronan's intellect started to show at an early age. When he was in elementary school, he often stayed inside during lunch to chat with his teacher instead of play outside with the other children.
Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
He skipped multiple grades, and by the age of 11, his mother started driving him an hour each way to Bard College at Simon's Rock, where he was the youngest student to enroll.
Arnaldo Magnani/Getty Images)
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
At the age of 15, he became the youngest person ever to graduate from Bard, earning degrees in philosophy and biology. After graduating college, 16-year-old Ronan got an internship working for Richard Holbrooke on John Kerry's presidential campaign.
Carmen Valdes/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images
Sources: Yale Law School, The Hollywood Reporter
Ronan was too young to get his own apartment, so he stayed on the couch of family friends Diane Sawyer and Mike Nichols.
Anna Webber / Getty Images
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
In 2005, at the age of 18, Ronan started law school at Yale, earning his degree in 2009. He remains a member of the New York Bar to this day.
f11photo/Shutterstock
Sources: The Hollywood Reporter, New York State Unified Court System, Yale
Meanwhile, from 2001-2009, Ronan acted as a youth spokesman for UNICEF, traveling around Africa. It was during a trip to the Sudan as a teen that Ronan contracted a serious bone infection. That infection led him to being in a wheelchair for four years, including his early years at Yale.
Shehzad Noorani/UNICEF via Getty Images
Sources: UNICEF, The Hollywood Reporter
"I couldn't wear pants for several years because I had these giant metal halos holding my bones together," he told The Hollywood Reporter. "So I had to wear stretchy MC Hammer pants. I spoke on the Hill in the Hammer pants, and I went to my first law school classes in the Hammer pants. It ain't great when you're trying to live your life and date and be a normal person."
Wikimedia Commons
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
As President Barack Obama took office, Ronan followed his mentor, Holbrooke, to the State Department, eventually becoming Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's special adviser on global youth issues.
Paul Zimmerman/WireImage
Sources: The New York Times, Forbes
Farrow made Forbes "30 Under 30" list in 2011. At the age of 24, the magazine ranked him at the top of its list of young people in law and policy.
Ann Hermes / The Christian Science Monitor via Getty Images
Sources: The New York Times, Forbes
In 2011, Ronan won a prestigious Rhodes scholarship and used it to study international relations at Oxford, which only 32 American students get every year. Past recipients include former President Bill Clinton, musician Kris Kristofferson, and MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow.
Moment Mobile ED/Getty
Sources: The New York Times, Huffington Post, US News and World Report
By the early 2010s, Ronan was becoming more and more recognizable. In 2013, Vice published a story outing Farrow as gay. Ronan didn't publicly confirm his sexuality for another five years.
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Ronan's longterm relationship with former Obama speechwriter and Crooked Media co-founder Jon Lovett was confirmed on the Recode Decode podcast in 2018. In August 2019, the couple bought a $1.87 million home in Los Angeles, according to Variety.
Emma McIntyre /VF19/WireImage
Sources: Recode Decode, Variety
It was also in 2013 that Mia Farrow threw into question Ronan's parentage, telling Vanity Fair that he was "possibly" the son of her ex-husband Frank Sinatra, who she was married to in the 1960s.
Bettmann/Getty
Source: Vanity Fair
The rumor had persisted over the years as Ronan grew more and more to resemble Ol' Blue Eyes. Ronan joked in a tweet: "Listen, we're all *possibly* Frank Sinatra's son." For Allen's part, he told Vulture that he believes Ronan is his son but he "wouldn't bet my life on it."
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After finishing his Rhodes scholarship at Oxford, Ronan started writing foreign policy pieces for outlets like The New York Times and The Atlantic, which eventually helped land him his own show on MSNBC.
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Sources: The New York Times, The Atlantic
While "Ronan Farrow Daily" was short-lived, Ronan remained at NBC News, where he continued to work on investigative pieces for the network.
Daniel Zuchnik/Getty Images
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
It was in the fall of 2016 that he first heard about the allegations against movie producer Harvey Weinstein during a pitch meeting with NBC News President Noah Oppenheim, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
REUTERS/Steve Crisp
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
After Ronan tossed out an idea of a story on sexual harassment in Hollywood, Oppenheim pointed out that actress Rose McGowan had accused an executive of raping her on Twitter, and that it was an open secret that it was Weinstein.
Rebecca Cook/Reuters
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
Ronan started digging into the story, but alleges that Weinstein soon found out he was on his trail and started threatening the network that he would expose the truth about Matt Lauer. The NBC News anchor was ultimately ousted from the network in the fall of 2017 over a rape allegation.
Getty
Sources: The Hollywood Reporter, Variety
When NBC News refused to run Ronan’s story, he says, he took it to The New Yorker instead. But The New York Times beat Ronan to breaking the news about Weinstein's history of paying out settlements to actresses and female employees.
The New Yorker
Sources: The New York Times, The New Yorker
Five days later, Ronan's report gave further details of the allegations against Weinstein, including reporting that he had sexually assaulted or harassed 13 women, and raped three. Weinstein was indicted and charged with predatory sexual assault and rape. His trial is set for 2020.
Shannon Stapleton /Reuters
Sources: The New Yorker, Page Six
Farrow was later recognized for his work exposing Harvey Weinstein with a Pulitzer Prize in public service, which he shares with New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey.
Evan Agostini/Invision/AP
Source: The New Yorker
Ronan has stayed on as a reporter at large at The New Yorker, writing several follow-ups on Weinstein as well as other accused sexual harassers, including former CBS CEO Les Moonves.
Noam Galai/Getty Images
Source: The New Yorker
Ronan is set to release a new book on October 15 called "Catch and Kill", which details how he uncovered the Weinstein scandal and the issues he faced bringing these allegations to light. Much of the book outlines the harassment he received trying to report the stories.
Little, Brown and Company
Source: Little, Brown and Company
In January 2018, he also inked an HBO deal to develop an investigative documentary series. "His work has contributed to this watershed moment in our culture, and we are excited to provide a platform for this dogged reporter to pursue projects that continue to speak truth to power," HBO Programming President Casey Bloys said in a statement.
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Many will be watching what 31-year-old Ronan Farrow does next.
John Lamparski/WireImage
