"People often have said, 'Gee, you live in a bubble' — and maybe I do. I get up in the morning, take the kids to school, then do the treadmill, then get into my room and work, have lunch, go back and work, practice the clarinet, see friends or go to a basketball game. It's a bourgeois, middle-class worker's life. But it's enabled me to be productive over the years."
In the early 1990s, when you were criticized for starting your relationship with Soon-Yi, were you immune to all that? Were you unaware of it?
"I was immune, yes I was. You can see I worked right through that, undiminished. Made films all through those years and at the same rate I was making them. I'm good that way. I am very disciplined and very monomaniacal and compartmentalized."
So you weren't traumatized by the scandal?
"Oh, no. Not in the slightest."
How has your wife, Soon-Yi, changed you?
"Oh, well, one of the great experiences of my life has been my wife. She had a very, very difficult upbringing in Korea: She was an orphan on the streets, living out of trash cans and starving as a 6-year-old. And she was picked up and put in an orphanage. And so I've been able to really make her life better. I provided her with enormous opportunities, and she has sparked to them. She's educated herself and has tons of friends and children and got a college degree and went to graduate school, and she has traveled all over with me now. She's very sophisticated and has been to all the great capitals of Europe. She has just become a different person. So the contributions I've made to her life have given me more pleasure than all my films."
You're saying how you changed her. How has she changed you?
"(Allen pauses.) Well, she's given me a lot of pleasure. I adore her, and she's given me a wonderful life. We've been married 20 years. And we were together for a few years before that. And she has given me the great years of my life, personally. She's a great companion and a great wife. She has given me a stable and wonderful home life and great companionship. I guess whenever you meet somebody and they're the right person for you, there is a great emotional contribution they make to your life."
But has she changed you in any way?
"(Pauses.) Changed me? I don't know if you could say she changed me. I don't know if I've changed. I might be the same person I was when I was 20. I'm not sure. I mean, I seem to have the same habits, the same work habits, the same phobias, the same enjoyments. I don't think I have changed much over the years at all. When you mention it, I try and think about the ways [I've changed]. I don't know if I've changed much."
Read the full interview at The Hollywood Reporter.
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