Scarlett Johansson: I 'love' and 'believe' Woody Allen

Scarlett Johansson has worked with Woody Allen on three films, and if given the opportunity, she'd collaborate with him again, she said in a new interview, despite recent renewed backlash against the director.

In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the actress said she's spoken with the director about the allegation of sexual molestation that's been made against him, and she believes he is innocent.

Stating that she has has had "a lot of conversations with him about it," she added, "He maintains his innocence and I believe him."

"I have been very direct with him, and he's very direct with me," she said. "I love Woody. ... I believe him, and I would work with him anytime."

In 2014, The New York Times published an open letter from Dylan Farrow, Allen's adoptive daughter with his ex-partner, Mia Farrow, in which Farrow accused the director of molesting her in 1992, when she was a child.

Allen responded by denying the allegation, as he always has. He also accused Mia Farrow of coaching Farrow as revenge for his romantic relationship with her elder daughter, Soon-Yi Previn.

"Mia insisted that I had abused Dylan and took her immediately to a doctor to be examined. Dylan told the doctor she had not been molested. Mia then took Dylan out for ice cream, and when she came back with her the child had changed her story," Allen wrote in The New York Times.

"Of course, I did not molest Dylan," he continued. "I loved her and hope one day she will grasp how she has been cheated out of having a loving father and exploited by a mother more interested in her own festering anger than her daughter's well-being."

Allen was investigated on child molestation claims for the alleged 1992 incident in Connecticut, but prosecutors decided not to charge him.

Johansson, who was named in Dylan Farrow's letter, stated at the time, "It would be ridiculous for me to make kind of assumption one way or the other."