Ronan Farrow - Early Life

Early Life

Born Satchel Ronan O'Sullivan Farrow, he is the sole biological child of film director Woody Allen and actress Mia Farrow. He was named after baseball player Satchel Paige and his maternal grandmother, actress Maureen O'Sullivan. He was a subject of his parents' well-publicized custody dispute in 1992.

Farrow first came to prominence as a child prodigy when at age 11 he became the youngest student to attend Bard College at Simon's Rock in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Although Simon's Rock specializes in teaching "younger scholars", most of its incoming first-year students are age 16. After receiving his AA degree, Farrow transferred to Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, where he moderated in the biology department and ultimately completed his senior thesis project in political science and philosophy. He went on to become the college's youngest graduate ever at age 15.

At age 15, Farrow was accepted to Yale Law School, in New Haven, Connecticut. He deferred his admission until the fall of 2006 to work as an adviser to Richard Holbrooke, former United States Ambassador to the United Nations, and also to work with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Holbrooke would later incorporate Farrow as a key member of his team upon his return to government as Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2009. Farrow was among the close staffers reported to have been present the night of Holbrooke's death in December 2010. During his time at Yale Law School, he was a summer associate at New York-based law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell. In 2008, he headed a study for the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the Kibera slums of Nairobi, Kenya, which focused on post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from Kenya's election violence.