Tragic Story of How Mia Farrow of 'Peyton Place' Fame Lost Three of Her Children

The actress Mia Farrow raised 14 children during her lifetime, four biological and ten adopted, but three suffered tragic deaths that caused controversy and estrangement from another two of her children in later years.

Married to her second husband, André Previn at the time, Mia had already given birth to twin sons Sascha and Matthew before they adopted their first child, a baby girl named Lark from Vietnam in 1973.

While Lark attended New York University nursing school, she got involved with a convicted felon named Chris McKinzie. According to Vanity Fair, Lark got pregnant and dropped out shortly before her graduation. She contracted HIV and had a second child before she died of AIDs-related complications on Christmas day in 2008.

She had been using drugs since her early 20’s and got arrested for shoplifting along with her sister Daisy in 1991. A downward spiral that got blamed on the bitter custody battle that ensued during the 1990s.

Mia discovered that her daughter Soon-Yi, whom she adopted in 1978 from Korea, had a sexual relationship with her longtime partner and lover, Woody Allen.

With Soon-Yi around twenty years old at the time, the affair infuriated Mia, and she cut her off from the family. Soon-Yi moved in with Woody and they got married in 1997.

In 2000, Mia’s 21-year old adoptive daughter, Tam died of heart failure. A fact her estranged son Moses later disputed.

“Tam struggled with depression for much of her life, a situation exacerbated by my mother refusing to get her help, insisting that Tam was just “moody,”' Moses wrote in a blog about his family and added, “One afternoon in 2000, after one final fight with Mia, which ended with my mother leaving the house, Tam committed suicide by overdosing on pills.”

Mia lost her third adoptive child, Thaddeus in September 2016. She adopted him from an orphanage in India in 1994 where he contracted polio that left him paralyzed from the waist down.

27-years-old at the time, Thaddeus committed suicide by shooting himself in the torso while he sat in his car in Roxbury, Connecticut, where he lived.

In 2018, Soon-Yi spoke out about the treatment she claimed they had to endure from Mia. We did the grocery shopping, starting in third grade, for the entire family. Lark and I wrote the list of everything that we needed for the house; we paid for it, we unpacked it. When I went to Ethical Culture, I had to pick up my siblings,” she said.

“For all of us, life under my mother’s roof was impossible if you didn’t do exactly what you were told, no matter how questionable the demand,” Moses added.

Moses also published an in-depth account wherein he defended Woody Allen after his adoptive sister, Dylan accused Woody of sexual abuse in 2014.

Actress Mia adopted Dylan in 1985, but Woody formally adopted her in 1991. In his blog post, Moses recounted disturbing incidents that involved his sister and mother, Mia.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. Other international suicide helplines can be found at befrienders.org.