“Go back in a time machine to when I was nine years old at the dinner table and you’d see my brother Moses across from me. He’s got cerebral palsy and was adopted from Korea. My sister Quincy would be next to him; she’s African-American and was adopted from a drug-addicted inner-city mother. My sister Minh, blind and adopted from Vietnam, doesn’t know anybody’s race. I mean, literally, she thinks I’m an Asian woman. My brother Suraj, who is adopted from Calcutta, is paraplegic — no use of his body from the waist down. He was abandoned at a train station and taken in by an orphanage, where he was chained to a stake in the ground, fed scraps, and beaten.
“There were fourteen of us — thirteen siblings in addition to myself. In a sense, I had the world’s problems on my doorstep. And I had to figure out what I could throw at these problems. So there was always going to be some kind of a public-service piece in my future.”
Ronan Farrow graduated from Bard College at Simon’s Rock at the age of 15, acted as a UNICEF Spokesperson for Youth for eight years, and graduated from Yale Law School in 2009 after deferring admission for several years. He’s worked with UN-affiliated groups and he acted as a Special Adviser for Humanitarian and NGO Affairs under the Obama administration. And now he’s the host of Ronan Farrow Daily on MSNBC. Oh, and he’s also a Rhodes Scholar.
You can’t help but to be impressed by this young man.
He has effectively mastered the art of the humble brag too. Ronan Farrow knows full well that his resume is incredibly impressive and he has no problem eloquently bringing up his worldly experience. At the same time, he does so with a great deal of charm, wit and humility. For example, his Instagram profile reads, “Ronan Farrow is a writer, lawyer and occasional government official. He does not know how to use Instagram.” He says his Facebook page is “a terrific place to yell at him.”
Ronan Farrow is immediately likable, even if this hasn’t necessarily translated to all that much success with his MSNBC program. Farrow simply doesn’t command the same kind of presence as someone like Keith Olbermann, but maybe that is because he is still such a young man… and one who continues to exude the “humble brag” persona.
Officially, Ronan is the son of Hollywood superstars Woody Allen and Mia Farrow. However, there are more than a few rumors saying that he is likely the child of the late Frank Sinatra, which would also explain where he gets that natural charm. His family life could not have been more different than Ol’ Blue Eyes, though.
It wouldn’t be at all fair to say that Ronan led a troubled childhood, at least from a financial perspective, but being surrounded by all of his international brothers and sisters has certainly helped to shape him into the man he is today. He is more sensitive to the world’s problems, because the world’s problems were brought straight into his home. It also helps that his mother is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, so I’m sure she helped to instill that sense of global responsibility in him.
“Growing up in a family like mine, it’s impossible to have anything but a deep appreciation for the arts and telling a good story.”
Considering how much he has already accomplished at the age of 26, I’m sure Ronan Farrow will have many more good stories to tell in the years to come. And hopefully his stories will help create a better world for all our brothers and sisters around the globe.
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