Who

Mia Farrow has appeared in dozens of movies since her star turn in the 1968 horror flick Rosemary's Baby. She may be best known, however, as Woody Allen's former flame and the mother of 15 kids.

Backstory

Farrow might come off as the quintessential New Yorker but she was born in Los Angeles to director John Farrow (known for 1950s films like Where Danger Lives and A Bullet Is Waiting) and actress Maureen O'Sullivan (of the original Tarzan films). Diagnosed with polio on her ninth birthday, Farrow spent several years in and out of hospitals recovering from the illness before recuperating and making her cinematic debut in her father's John Paul Jones in 1959. It wasn't until 1964, though, that she entered the public eye, by playing minx Allison MacKenzie on soap opera Peyton Place. Four years later, Farrow had a starring role in the seminal 1968 horror flick Rosemary's Baby, and she worked steadily throughout the '70s with major roles in winners like The Great Gatsby and in cheesy B-movies like Avalanche. In the '80s Farrow's acting career peaked when she served as muse and partner of Woody Allen—the pair made 13 films together over the course of the decade, including Broadway Danny Rose, Radio Days, New York Stories, and Husbands and Wives.

Drama

In 1992, Farrow discovered dirty Polaroids of her then 21-year-old adopted daughter Soon-Yi on Allen's mantle, an event he later called "one of the great pieces of luck in my life." An acrimonious—and very public—court battle followed. Farrow accused Allen of molesting the couple's adopted daughter, Dylan; Allen accused Farrow of making the whole thing up and said she'd hung a sign on his bathroom door that read "Child Molester." (Allen and Soon-Yi eventually married in Venice in 1997.) Farrow's 1997 autobiography What Falls Away details some of the drama in the Farrow-Allen household. A highlight: Allen was disgusted by the prospect of eating home-cooked meals and once greeted the sight of an elaborate Christmas feast with the comment, "Pardon me while I puke," and then went into the kitchen to juice some apples.

Soundbite

"There are 127 varieties of nuts. Mia's 116 of them," Roman Polanski, the director of Rosemary's Baby, once said.

Personal

The once waifish Farrow married a 51-year-old Frank Sinatra in 1966, when she was just 21. The couple divorced after two years and Farrow remarried pianist Andre Previn in 1970 before divorcing in 1979. She now has 15 children, 11 of them adopted. Their names? Glad you asked. There's Matthew (biological), Sascha (biological), Fletcher (biological), Soon Yi (adopted), Lark (adopted), Summer (adopted), Tam (adopted; died in 2000), Satchel (biological), Dylan (adopted), Moses (adopted), Isaiah (adopted), Kaeli-Shea (adopted), Frankie (adopted), Thaddeus (adopted), and Gabriel (adopted). In the years since the Farrow-Allen scandal, Satchel and Dylan have changed their names to Roman and Malone, respectively.

Habitat

Farrow and her brood live in a house in Bridgewater, Conn. Her former apartment—a sprawling rent-controlled apartment on 73rd and Central Park West where she lived for three decades—was featured in Allen's film Hannah and Her Sisters.

Pet cause

In case her 11 adopted children aren't sufficient evidence, let it be known that Farrow has long been a passionate do-gooder. She's been a UNICEF goodwill ambassador for the last decade, and has recently taken on Darfur as her cause du jour: She keeps a blog devoted to the crisis, where she asks readers to donate to various charities and write letters to politicians. Recently, Farrow publicly offered to "exchange her freedom" for that of a Sudanese humanitarian worker, who was being held in detention in a UN hospital. She also flew to Cambodia to stage a Darfur rally at a former prison of the Khmer Rouge, but was forcibly prevented by Cambodian police from going through with it.

True story

Farrow made a spiritual pilgrimage to India in 1968 and studied transcendental meditation at the ashram of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. As he told Farrow her secret personal mantra, she says she sneezed, missing out on the word forever.