[FairfieldLife] 'What I've Learned' by Mia Farrow...

Sat, 15 Jul 2006 02:44:31 -0700

 Esquire Magazine

What I've Learned: Mia Farrow


By John H. Richardson   Published: July 14, 2006
 
Mia Farrow (Actress, 61)
Bridgewater, Connecticut
I've not been dainty about experiencing life. I've absolutely plunged in. I should be fatter, really, because I eat so much.
My brother died when I was thirteen and my family just disintegrated. My parents are Irish, and they started drinking, and my father couldn't work again. We felt his heart just broke. He died at fifty-eight, after a series of heart attacks. So I started auditioning. I felt I needed to pull my own weight.
When I married Frank Sinatra, my father had recently died, and he had just turned fifty, and people said, "Oh, you're looking for a father." It's hard for me to, um, deny or confirm. But what I will tell you is that he was the coolest, handsomest, sexiest guy. I don't think there are many women of any age who could have resisted him. He was utterly charming. Absolutely adorable. So you can talk father all you like — he wasn't anything like my father.
You can't have a full man-woman relationship without sex.
I don't like anything that feels slippery. I just don't like the feeling of being on like ice or snow, where you just slip. I don't like that feeling that I'm gonna fall.
When I was nine, I got polio. And I was taken from the security of my family into another world, the Los Angeles General Hospital wing for contagious diseases. It was in the middle of the polio epidemic. I was shown sickness, and uncertainty, and pain, even death. Then I was released from that and dropped back into my life, and I never felt quite the same. It gave me a sense that I had to find a life that was meaningful, and that very definitely has shaped the family that I have. I've adopted ten children, most of them with special needs, including one son who is paraplegic as a result of polio. So this is my way of addressing that, sort of over and over.
It is by that which cannot be taken away that we can measure ourselves.
I sneezed when I was getting my mantra. I have terrible hay fever, and you have to present these flowers. As the Maharishi said my mantra, I sneezed. I said, "Excuse me? I don't think I heard you exactly right." But he would not repeat it. So from that day on, I don't know if I'm doing it right.
After the Maharishi, I started hitchhiking across India. I withdrew everything from my bank and just gave it all away. And then I thought, Well, how useless is this, 'cause now I'm poor, too. So I went back to work.
I would rather have someone's respect than their money.
You don't want your son's father married to your son's sister, you know? That's bad for family values.
If you have a baby drowning in a lake, do you have a moral obligation to pull the baby out? Well, almost everybody would say yes. But what if the lake is a mile away? What if it's a continent away? I think helplessness is just not an option. There's always stuff we can do. At the very least, you could go to savedarfur.org and write your letter.
You shouldn't just ricochet through life. What I would tell my daughters is: "Don't get involved with anyone who didn't respect his mother."
Frank Sinatra had a very strong moral structure. He was actually quite staid in certain respects, very much the Italian father. There was a part of him that would say, "Break his legs," but there was a part of him that wouldn't actually do it. And there was a part of him that was an excellent father and an excellent friend, who wouldn't lie, who would do the right thing for other people and seek no reward.
There is something about a creative mind — the ability to surprise. I really want somebody to surprise me.
If a role is so out of par and it's apparently nothing like you, it is, in fact, you, too. You just have to get there.
I sure believe in rules and standards. I don't allow the kids to e-mail during the week. Talking on the phone is fine on weekends, as long as their grades are in the A-B range. Absolutely no TV — at all, ever — except maybe something I've TiVoed from the Discovery Channel. And I won't let them read junk. They're not gonna read The Baby-Sitters Club, not when they could be reading Treasure Island or Tom Sawyer. That's not gonna happen.
If one kid wants to spend his life fixing cars and another kid wants to fix the world, both are equally valid. My son Thaddeus is paraplegic. To go through his day, most of us would be plenty pissed off and humiliated. But he can drag himself across the floor with such dignity, and still have his goal of fixing cars.
Find things that shine and move toward them.
It's shameful to be talking about myself for so long.

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