Mia Farrow’s Son Thaddeus Dies: How the Actress Built Her Blended Family (2024)

Mia Farrow’s month has been one with incredible highs and lows. On the heels of the birth of her 12th grandchild comes word that one of her 14 children — 27-year-old son, Thaddeus — committed suicide.

Thaddeus, who was a paraplegic, was adopted from India. According to a 2013 Vanity Fair profile on Mia’s family, in which many of her children were interviewed, it was noted that “he was discarded in a railway station and forced to crawl on his hands and stubs of legs to beg for food.” Later, while living in an orphanage, he was “chained to a post” and kids would hurl rocks at him. However, when the actress and humanitarian set eyes on him for the first time, she said, “That’s my son,” and brought him home in 1994. While she was told he was 5, doctors determined that he was actually 12. He had to overcome many issues beyond his physical ones, including a tendency to bite Farrow and try to rip out her hair.

“It was scary to be brought to a world of people whose language I did not understand, with different skin colors,” Thaddeus — who became a car mechanic and was studying to become a police officer — told the magazine. “The fact that everyone loved me was a new experience, overwhelming at first.”

Farrow issued a statement about his death on Thursday afternoon.

Farrow had previously shared a photo of Thaddeus — as well as Frankie-Minh — not long after they joined the family.

Farrow is the original Angelina Jolie when it comes to building a blended family. She’s a mother to 14 — though now only 11 are living. This is her third adopted child who has passed away. However, having a big family wasn’t her goal.

“I never thought I would have so many children,” she told Vanity Fair. “That was never a plan.”

Farrow’s growing family started with her second husband, André Previn, with whom she had three biological children. Twins Matthew and Sascha Previn were born in 1970 and are now a litigator and stay-at-home dad (married to a pediatric cardiologist), respectively. Another son, Fletcher Previn, was born in 1974 and is a vice president at IBM.

It was with the conductor that Farrow adopted her first three children. First there were Vietnamese infants Lark (in 1973) and Summer, who later went by Daisy, in 1976, and they were followed by a Korean daughter, Soon-Yi, in 1978 — a year before Mia and Previn divorced. Soon-Yi had been abused and left by her prostitute mother before Mia took her in when she was 7.

We all know what happened with Soon-Yi, who embarked on a relationship with Mia’s longtime partner Woody Allen as a teen and is now married to him. She’s famously estranged from her mother. Lark, a mom of two, died of complications from pneumonia in 2008. As for Daisy, she is a construction manager in Brooklyn.

After Mia’s marriage with Previn ended, she adopted Moses, who has cerebral palsy and was born in Korea, followed by daughter Dylan, who was born in Texas in 1985. By then she was in a relationship with Allen, and the director — and frequent Farrow collaborator — co-adopted them. After five years of trying, Allen and Farrow also had a biological child, Satchel, who changed his name to Ronan in 1987.

Ronan is the brainy TV personality (he graduated from college at 15) who stood by his sister Dylan, who accused Allen of sexual abuse, which she spoke publicly about for the first time in 2014. Dylan, a writer, just welcomed her first child, making Farrow a grandmother for the 12th time. Moses, now a family therapist and photographer, does not keep in touch with any of his siblings or with Farrow. He sided with Soon-Yi and Allen — and suggested that his mom convinced Dylan that she was sexually abused by Allen when she wasn’t, as some type of payback for his relationship with Soon-Yi. (Allen has repeatedly denied that he abused Dylan.)

After Farrow’s relationship with Allen ended, she opened her home and heart to even more children — five to be exact. First there was Tam, a girl from Vietnam, who was blind, in 1992. In 2000, she died, at just 19, of a heart-related issue.

At around the same time that Tam was adopted, Farrow — who in later years would ask her children to offer their opinions before she adopted any new children — also adopted Isaiah, an African-American born to a crack-addicted mother. Now 24, he attended the University of Connecticut and later worked at a call center there. Quincy, who is also African-American and was also born to a drug-addicted mom, was adopted in 1994. A few years ago, she was still living at home while attending college. Thaddeus was also adopted in 1994.

Finally, there is Minh — or Frankie-Minh. Like Tam, she is blind and hails from Vietnam. She was adopted in 1995.

In a 2013 interview with the Guardian, Farrow said, “I don’t know if you know anything about my family, but they are drawn from a large number of countries and different cities. Most of us are not related by blood but by love and the deepest commitment.”

As for her hopes and dreams for her eclectic family, she said, “I certainly don’t expect them all to follow in my footsteps. I want them to be happy whatever they do. But I have taught my children that the things that matter are the two Rs — respect and responsibility. If you are guided by that, you can’t go far wrong.”