Mia Farrow to help deprived Indian kids

2 August 1999

Hollywood actress and former wife of director Woody Allen, Mia Farrow wants to come to India to care for deprived children.

''I would like to be a relief worker,'' says Farrow, who already has a family of 13 adopted children including a 10-year-old boy from Calcutta.

In an interview to The Sunday Times, London, the 53-year-old actress scoffed at suggestions that she might see herself as a latter-day Mother Teresa. ''Make no mistake, it is not charity. I am getting more out of it than I put in,'' she says.

In fact, she had planned out her life from the time when she was a nine-year-old suffering from a polio attack. The month she spent in a hospital at Beverly Hills surrounded by children fighting for survival completely changed the course of her life.

''It changed my view of life. I became aware that everybody did not live happily in Beverly Hills, that there was a precariousness to our existence.''

She has adopted 14 children - African-American, Korean and Vietnamese. Two are blind, one has cerebral palsy, another is a drug addict. One of her daughters, Soon-Yi married Woody Allen a few years ago.

Thaddeus, the Indian boy, was adopted when he was only five years old. A polio victim, he had been found at a railway station in Caclutta at the age of two and taken to an orphanage.

''I wish I could walk,'' Thaddeus said on his 10th birthday.

''Why was he not vaccinated? It should not happen when we have a cure,'' says Farrow in anguish.

She and her son have been recruited to lead a $500 million fund-raising programme on behalf of the UNICEF that aims to eradicate polio from the world by the year 2000.

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