Diane Keaton defends 'friend' Woody Allen against molestation claim
— -- Though many stars have spoken out against director Woody Allen in recent weeks, Diane Keaton took to social media Monday to defend him.
Keaton, who has collaborated with Allen on several films and won an Oscar for her starring role in his 1978 movie "Annie Hall," tweeted that she is still standing by the director, despite his adopted daughter's claim that he molested her as a child.
Allen has long denied the allegation.
"Woody Allen is my friend and I continue to believe him," Keaton tweeted. "It might be of interest to take a look at the 60 Minute interview from 1992 and see what you think."
Allen, 82, has maintained for years that he never abused Farrow and claims that her mother and his former partner, Mia Farrow, coached her to say as much during their acrimonious split. Allen and Mia Farrow, 72, ended their years-long relationship in 1992; he later married her adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn.
As the Time's Up and #MeToo movements have grown over the past few months, many have spoken out against Allen, with some actors saying that they would never work with him again. Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Hall and Griffin Newman, three actors who appear in his most recent film, "A Rainy Day In New York," pledged their salaries from the movie to charities. In light of the donations, Alec Baldwin, who has worked on three films with Allen, spoke out in his defense.
"The renunciation of him and his work, no doubt, has some purpose," Baldwin tweeted in mid-January. "But it’s unfair and sad to me. I worked w WA 3 times and it was one of the privileges of my career."
In a statement provided to ABC News earlier this month, Allen accused the Farrow family of "cynically using the opportunity afforded by the Time's Up movement to repeat this discredited allegation" and added, "I never molested my daughter."
“When this claim was first made more than 25 years ago, it was thoroughly investigated by both the Child Sexual Abuse Clinic of the Yale-New Haven Hospital and New York State Child Welfare. They both did so for many months and independently concluded that no molestation had ever taken place. Instead, they found it likely a vulnerable child had been coached to tell the story by her angry mother [actress Mia Farrow] during a contentious breakup," Allen said. "Dylan’s older brother Moses has said that he witnessed their mother doing exactly that -- relentlessly coaching Dylan, trying to drum into her that her father was a dangerous sexual predator. It seems to have worked -- and, sadly, I’m sure Dylan truly believes what she says."
