American actress Mia Farrow was the third of seven children born to film star Maureen O'Sullivan and director John Farrow. She enjoyed the usual pampered Hollywood kid lifestyle until she fell victim to polio at age 9; her upward struggle from this illness was the first of many instances in which the seemingly frail Farrow exhibited a will of iron. Educated in an English convent school, Farrow returned to California with plans to take up acting (she'd had a minor taste of this in a bit part in her father's 1959 film John Paul Jones). With precious little prior experience, she debuted on Broadway in a 1963 revival of The Importance of Being Earnest. In 1964 the actress was cast as Alison McKenzie in the nighttime TV soap opera Peyton Place, which made her an idol of the American teen set. That people over the age of 18 also were interested in Farrow was proven in the summer of 1965, when she became the third wife of singer Frank Sinatra, 30 years her senior. The marriage provided fodder for both the tabloids and leering nightclub comics for a while, and while the union didn't last long, it put Farrow into the international film-going consciousness. (Farrow and Sinatra remained close long-time friends after the dissolution of their marriage.)

Farrow's first important movie appearance was in Rosemary's Baby (1968) as the unwitting mother of Satan's offspring. Later, she was often cast in damsel-in-distress parts, capitalizing on Rosemary's Baby, and in "trendy" pop-culture roles for several years thereafter, in the meantime marrying musician Andre Previn and starting a family. Her skills as an actress increased, even if her films didn't bring in large crowds; Farrow's performance as Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby (1974) is one of the few high points of that disappointing film. By the early 1980s, newly divorced Farrow had taken up with comedian-director Woody Allen, for whom she did some of her best work in such films as Zelig (1983), Purple Rose of Cairo (1984), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Radio Days (1987) and Broadway Danny Rose (1984), wherein she was barely recognizable in a brilliant turn as a bosomy blonde bimbo. Farrow and Allen were soulmates in private as well as cinematic life; she had a child by him named Sacha, who was Allen's first son. Farrow once more commanded newspaper headlines in 1992 when she discovered that Allen had been having an affair with her adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn (whom he later married). Farrow and Allen were then engaged in a long and well-publicized court battle for custody of their adopted and biological children.