Roman Polanski

Raymond Roman Thierry Polański (; born 18 August 1933) is a Polish and French filmmaker and actor. He is the recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, three British Academy Film Awards, ten César Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards as well as a Golden Bear and a Palme d'Or.

In 1977, Polanski was arrested in the United States for drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl. He pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of unlawful sex with a minor in exchange for a probation-only sentence. The night before his sentencing hearing in 1978, he learned that the judge would likely reject the proffered plea bargain, so he fled the U.S. to Europe, where he continued his career. He remains a fugitive from the U.S. justice system. Subsequently, allegations of abuse have been made by several women.

Polanski's parents moved the family from his birthplace in Paris back to Kraków in 1937. Two years later, the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany started World War II, and the family found themselves trapped in the Kraków Ghetto. After his mother and father were taken in raids, Polanski spent his formative years in foster homes, surviving the Holocaust by adopting a false identity and concealing his half Jewish heritage. In 1969, Polanski's pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate, was murdered, along with four friends by members of the Manson Family in an internationally notorious case. He has also starred in several Polish films as well as in his own films.

Early life Roman Polanski was born on 18 August 1933, in interbellum Paris. He was the son of Bula (aka "Bella") Katz-Przedborska and Mojżesz (or Maurycy) Liebling (later Polański), a painter and manufacturer of sculptures, who after World War II was known as Ryszard Polański. Polanski's father was Jewish and originally from Poland. Polanski's mother was born in Russia. Her own father was Jewish and mother was a Gentile, but Bula had been raised in the Catholic faith. She had a daughter, Annette, by her previous husband. Annette survived Auschwitz, where her mother was murdered, and left Poland forever for France.

World War II and the Holocaust The Polański family moved back to Kraków, Poland, in early 1937,

Polanski's father was transferred, along with thousands of other Jews, to Mauthausen, a group of 49 German concentration camps in Austria. His mother, who was four months pregnant at the time, was taken to Auschwitz and killed in the gas chamber soon after arriving. The forced exodus took place immediately after the German liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto, as portrayed in Polanski's 2002 film The Pianist. Polanski, who was then hiding from the Germans, saw his father being marched off with a long line of people. Polanski tried getting closer to his father to ask him what was happening and got within a few yards. His father saw him, but afraid his son might be spotted by the German soldiers, whispered (in Polish), "Get lost!" The punishment for helping a Jew in German-occupied Poland was death.

As Polanski roamed the countryside trying to survive in a Poland now occupied by German troops, he witnessed many horrors, such as being "forced to take part in a cruel and sadistic game in which German soldiers took shots at him for target practice". The author Ian Freer concludes that Polanski's constant childhood fears and dread of violence have contributed to the "tangible atmospheres he conjures up on film".

After the war After the war, Polanski was reunited with his father and moved back to Kraków. His father remarried on 21 December 1946 to Wanda Zajączkowska (whom Polanski had never liked) and died of cancer in 1984. Time repaired the family contacts; Polanski visited them in Kraków, and relatives visited him in Hollywood and Paris. Polanski recalls the villages and families he lived with as relatively primitive by European standards:

Polanski returned to Hollywood in 1973 to direct Chinatown (1974) for Paramount Pictures. The film is widely considered to be one of the finest American mystery crime movies, inspired by the real-life California Water Wars, a series of disputes over southern California water at the beginning of the 20th century.

It was nominated for 11 Academy Awards, including those for actors Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. Robert Towne won for Best Original Screenplay. It also had actor-director John Huston in a supporting role, and was the last film Polanski directed in the United States. In 1991, the film was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" and it is frequently listed as among the best in world cinema.

The Tenant (1976) Polanski returned to Paris for his next film, The Tenant (1976), which was based on a 1964 novel by Roland Topor, a French writer of Polish-Jewish origin. In addition to directing the film, Polanski also played a leading role of a timid Polish immigrant living in Paris. Together with Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby, The Tenant can be seen as the third installment in a loose trilogy of films called the "Apartment Trilogy" that explores the themes of social alienation and psychic and emotional breakdown.

1979–2004

Tess (1979) He dedicated his next film, Tess (1979), to the memory of his late wife, Sharon Tate. It was Tate who first suggested he read Tess of the d'Urbervilles, which she thought would make a good film; he subsequently expected her to star in it. Nearly a decade after Tate's death, he met Nastassja Kinski, a model and aspiring young actress who had already been in a number of European films. He offered her the starring role, which she accepted. Her father was Klaus Kinski, a leading German actor, who had introduced her to films.

Because the role required having a local dialect, Polanski sent her to London for five months of study and to spend time in the Dorset countryside to get a flavor of the region.

Tess was shot in the north of France instead of Hardy's England and became the most expensive film made in France up to that time. Ultimately, it proved a financial success and was well received by both critics and the public. Polanski won France's César Awards for Best Picture and Best Director and received his fourth Academy Award nomination (and his second nomination for Best Director). The film received three Oscars: best cinematography, best art direction, best costume design, and was nominated for best picture.

At the time, there were rumors that Polanski and Kinski became romantically involved, which he confirmed in a 1994 interview with Diane Sawyer, but Nastassja says the rumors are untrue; they were never lovers or had an affair. She admits that "there was a flirtation. There could have been a seduction, but there was not. He had respect for me." She also recalls his influence on her while filming: "He was really a gentleman, not at all like the things I had heard. He introduced me to beautiful books, plays, movies. He educated me."

In 1981, Polanski directed and co-starred (as Mozart) in a stage production of Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus, first in Warsaw, then in Paris.

Death and the Maiden (1994) In 1994 Polanski directed a film of the acclaimed play Death and the Maiden starring Ben Kingsley and Sigourney Weaver. The film is based on the Ariel Dorfman play of the same name. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times praised Polanski on his directing writing, "Death and the Maiden is all about acting. In other hands, even given the same director, this might have been a dreary slog."

The Fearless Vampire Killers (1997)

In 1997, Polanski directed a stage version of his 1967 film The Fearless Vampire Killers, which debuted in Vienna Polanski later won the 2002 Academy Award for Best Director. Because Polanski would have been arrested in the United States, he did not attend the Academy Awards ceremony in Hollywood. After the announcement of the Best Director Award, Polanski received a standing ovation from most of those present in the theater. Actor Harrison Ford accepted the award for Polanski and then presented the Oscar to him at the Deauville Film Festival five months later in a public ceremony. They had completed a script for Pompeii and were nearing production when the film was cancelled due to a looming actors' strike in September 2007. After that film fell apart, they moved on to Harris's novel, The Ghost, and adapted it for the screen together.

The cast includes Ewan McGregor as the writer and Pierce Brosnan as former British Prime Minister Adam Lang. The film was shot on locations in Germany. and was released in the United States by Sony Pictures Classics on 16 December 2011.

Co-stars Jodie Foster and Kate Winslet commented about Polanski's directing style. According to Foster, "He has a very, very definitive style about how he likes it done. He decides everything. He decided every lens. Every prop. Everything. It's all him." Also noting that style of directing, New York Film Festival director Richard Pena, during the American premiere of the film, called Polanski "a poet of small spaces ... in just a couple of rooms he can conjure up an entire world, an entire society." The film was shot from December 2012 to February 2013 in French and is Polanski's first non-English-language feature film in forty years. on 25 May 2013.

Based on a True Story (2017)

Polanski's Based on a True Story is an adaptation of the French novel by bestselling author Delphine de Vignan. The film follows a writer (Emmanuelle Seigner) struggling to complete a new novel, while followed by an obsessed fan (Eva Green). It started production in November 2016 from a script adapted by Polanski and Olivier Assayas. It premiered out of competition at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival on 27 May 2017 and opened in France on 1 November 2017.

Expulsion from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

In May 2018, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences stated that the board "has voted to expel actor Bill Cosby and director Roman Polanski from its membership in accordance with the organisation's Standards of Conduct." Polanski is one of only four members to have been expelled from the Academy. Following its expulsion of Harvey Weinstein, the academy's Standards of Conduct had recently been revised as a result of impacts of the #MeToo and Time's Up movements on the film industry. The same year, his wife Emmanuelle Seigner rejected the invitation to join the academy, denouncing the "hypocrisy" of a group that expelled Polanski.

An Officer and a Spy (2019)

Polanski's 2019 film An Officer and a Spy, centers on the notorious 19th century Dreyfus affair. The film stars Jean Dujardin as French officer Georges Picquart and follows his struggle from 1896 to 1906 to expose the truth about the doctored evidence that led to Alfred Dreyfus, one of the few Jewish members of the French Army's general staff, being wrongly convicted of passing military secrets to the German Empire and sent to Devil's Island. The film is written by Robert Harris, who was working with Polanski for the third time. It was produced by Alain Goldman's Legende Films and distributed by Gaumont. Filming began on 26 November 2018 and was completed on 28 April 2019.

Although set in Paris, the film was first scheduled to shoot in Warsaw in 2014, for economic reasons. However, production was postponed after Polanski moved to Poland for filming and the U.S. Government filed extradition papers. The Polish government eventually rejected them, by which time new French film tax credits had been introduced, allowing the film to shoot on location in Paris. It was budgeted at €60m and was again set to start production in July 2016, however its production was postponed as Polanski waited on the availability of a star, whose name was not announced. In a 2017 interview Polanski discussed the difficulty of the project:

It had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on 30 August 2019. It received a standing ovation and won the Grand Jury Prize. It was released in France on 13 November 2019, by Gaumont. The film has received backlash due to the plot of the film relating to Polanski's sexual abuse case and further accusations of harassment and assault.

Polanski caused outrage by comparing his own experience's to Dreyfus's. Aside from Polanski's involvement, the film was not controversial and was generally well reviewed.

In February 2020, Polanski won Best Director at France's 2020 Cesar Awards. Neither Polanski nor the cast and crew of An Officer and a Spy (J'accuse) attended the awards ceremony hosted at the Salle Pleyel in Paris. Polanski said that he will not submit himself to a "public lynching" over rape accusations he denies. Addressing the accusations of sexual assault leveled at him, he said, "Fantasies of unhealthy minds are now treated as proven facts." This is Polanski's fifth Best Director Cesar win, the record for a single director; he previously won for Tess, The Pianist, The Ghost Writer, and Venus in Fur. Polanski's wife Emmanuelle Seigner accepted the award on his behalf.

Despite Polanski's absence from the awards ceremony, his nomination and win sparked protests due to the rape charges that he still faces. The protestors held up signs with slogans like "Shame on an industry that protects rapists". Police clashed with protestors, even firing tear gas upon them. Actions were also taken by celebrities, such as Adèle Haenel, Noémie Merlant and Celine Sciamma, who walked out of the awards. Many other celebrities and feminists spoke out against Polanski online, such as NousToutes, a French feminist collective, who called the win "shameful", and Jessica Chastain tweeted, "I Fucking Stan" in regard to the protests. At the same time some celebrities came to his defense, like actress Fanny Ardant, who said, "When I love someone, I love them passionately. And I love Roman Polanski a lot... a lot... So I'm very happy for him. Then, I understand that not everyone agrees but long live freedom!" and actress Brigitte Bardot who said, "Thankfully Polanski exists and he is saving cinema from its mediocrity! I judge him on his talent and not on his private life! I regret never having shot with him!" The actor Lambert Wilson called the protest campaign against Polanski "abominable public lynching", as did Isabelle Huppert, who stated that "lynching is a form of pornography". Likewise, Polanski's alleged victim Samantha Geimer criticized the protesters as "very opportunistic", and said that "If you want to change the world today, you do it by... demanding people be held accountable today, not by picking someone who is famous and thinking that if you demonise him for things that happened decades ago that somehow that has any value in protecting people and changing society".

The Palace (2023)

The Palace began filming in February 2022 in Gstaad, Switzerland. The film stars Mickey Rourke, Fanny Ardant and Oliver Masucci, and is a black comedy about the guests at a Swiss luxury hotel on New Year's Eve 1999. Polanski co-wrote the screenplay with fellow Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski, who also co-wrote Polanski's first feature, Knife in the Water, in 1962. The film was unable to find financing in France due to souring French public opinion of Polanski following a new round of sexual assault allegations, and ended up being primarily funded by the Italian company, Rai Cinema. Polanski's reputation also brought casting challenges, with a number of actors turning down roles for fear of tarnishing their careers. The film had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on 2 September 2023, before it was released theatrically in Italy by 01 Distribution on 28 September 2023.

2023 Venice Film Festival controversy

The inclusion of films from Polanski, Woody Allen, and Luc Besson at the 2023 Venice Film Festival was controversial and brought significant criticism to its organizers due to the various sex abuse allegations against all three. Festival head Alberto Barbera defended their inclusion, saying of Polanski specifically, "I don't understand why one cannot distinguish between the responsibilities of the man and those of the artist. Polanski is 90 years old, he is one of the few working masters, he made an extraordinary film. It may be the last film of his career, although I hope he does like De Oliveira, who made films until he was 105. I stand firmly among those who in the debate distinguish between the responsibility of the man and that of the artist."

Personal life

In 1959, Polanski married actress Barbara Kwiatkowska-Lass. She starred in his short film When Angels Fall. The couple separated in 1961 and divorced the next year.

Polanski met actress Sharon Tate while filming The Fearless Vampire Killers, and during the production, the two of them began dating. A number of other women have later accused Polanski of raping them when they were teenagers. An Interpol red notice was issued for his arrest, and he rarely leaves France.

Sexual abuse

On 11 March 1977, three years after making Chinatown, Polanski was arrested at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel for the sexual assault of 13-year-old Samantha Gailey. Gailey had modeled for Polanski during a Vogue photoshoot the previous day around the swimming pool at the Bel Air home of Polanski was indicted on six counts of criminal behavior, including rape. Gailey's attorney confirmed the judge changed his mind after he met the judge in his chambers:

Polanski was told by his attorney that "the judge could no longer be trusted" and that the judge's representations were "worthless". where he had a home. One day later, he left for nowrap|France.

In 1988, Gailey sued Polanski. Among other things, the suit alleged sexual assault, false imprisonment, seduction of a minor, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. In 1993, Polanski agreed to settle with his victim. In August 1996, Polanski still owed her $604,416; court filings confirm that the settlement was completed by 1997 via a confidential financial arrangement. An Interpol red notice was issued in 1978 after he fled the United States, limiting his movements to France, Switzerland, and Poland.

During a television interview on 10 March 2011, Geimer blamed the media, reporters, the court, and the judge for having caused "way more damage to me and my family than anything Roman Polanski has ever done", and opined that the judge was using her and Polanski for media exposure.

In late October 2014, Polanski was questioned by Polish prosecutors in Kraków. On 30 October 2015, Polish judge Dariusz Mazur denied a request by the United States to extradite Polanski, who has dual French–Polish citizenship, for a full trial, claiming that it would be "obviously unlawful". The Kraków prosecutor's office declined to challenge the court's ruling, agreeing that Polanski had served his punishment and did not need to face an American court ever again.

Poland's national justice ministry appealed, arguing that sexual abuse of minors should be prosecuted regardless of the suspect's accomplishments or the length of time since the suspected crime took place. In a December 2016 decision, the Supreme Court of Poland dismissed the government's appeal, holding that the prosecutor general had failed to prove misconduct or flagrant legal error on the part of the lower court.

Preparations for An Officer and a Spy had been stalled by the extradition request.

On 3 May 2018, Polanski was removed from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, with the decision referencing the case.

Polanski has blamed Harvey Weinstein for the renewed focus on his sexual abuse case in the 2000s and claimed that Weinstein tried to brand him a "child rapist" to stop him from winning an Oscar in 2003.

In March 2023, Geimer and her husband met with Polanski and his wife Seigner for a French magazine cover interview. Geimer states in the interview: "Let me be very clear: what happened with Polanski was never a big problem for me. I didn't even know it was illegal, that someone could be arrested for it. I was fine, I'm still fine. It was so unfair and so in opposition to justice ... Everyone should know by now that Roman has served his sentence. Which was ... long, if you want my opinion. Anyone who thinks that he deserves to be in prison is wrong. It isn't the case today and it wasn't the case yesterday."

Documentary films In 2008, the documentary film by Marina Zenovich, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, was released in Europe and the United States where it won numerous awards.

Vanity Fair libel case In 2004, Polanski sued Vanity Fair magazine in London for libel. A 2002 article in the magazine claimed that Polanski promised he would "make another Sharon Tate out of you" in an attempt to seduce a Scandinavian model while he was travelling to Tate's funeral. He received supporting testimony from Mia Farrow, and Vanity Fair "was unable to prove that the incident occurred". Polanski was awarded £50,000 in damages plus some of his legal costs.

Matan Uziel libel case In December 2017, Polanski filed a ₪1.5 million suit in Herzliya Magistrates' Court against Israeli journalist and filmmaker Matan Uziel. Polanski maintained that Uziel, through his website, www.imetpolanski.com, falsely reported that five women had come forward to accuse him of raping them. Polanski was suing for libel and defamation of character. Herzliya Magistrates' Court rejected Polanski's request to be exempt from appearing in court after filing the libel suit. While Polanski gave various reasons for his inability to appear, the presiding judge, Gilad Hess, dismissed them one by one and ordered Polanski to pay Uziel ₪10,000 in costs. In November 2018, it was published that Polanski decided to drop the lawsuit, and was ordered by the court to pay Uziel ₪30,000 (US$8,000) for court costs. The court accepted Uziel's request that the suit not be dropped, but rather that it be rejected, making Polanski unable to sue Uziel again over the same issue in the future.

In late December 2019, in Polanski's interviews with Paris Match and , the latter accused Matan Uziel of carefully orchestrating the attacks on his character and for playing a major role in designing an international campaign to besmirch his name and reputation in order to make his career fall from grace.

In November 2022, Polanski filed a cybersquatting dispute with World Intellectual Property Organization against the domain name imetpolanski.com. Polanski asked World Intellectual Property Organization to rule that the site was cybersquatting. However, the three-person panel ruled that Polanski did not show the domain was registered and used in bad faith, nor did he show that the registrant, Matan Uziel, lacked rights or legitimate interests in the domain name.

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences case In April 2019, following his expulsion from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Polanski filed a lawsuit against the academy alleging that the decision to expel him was not appropriately supported and demanding his reinstatement. In August 2020 his expulsion was upheld by the court with the judge finding that the academy's board had given Polanski a fair hearing and that they had cause to expel him.

Charlotte Lewis In 2010, lawyer Gloria Allred appeared in a press conference with British actress Charlotte Lewis, where she stated that Polanski had forced himself on her while she was auditioning for Pirates in Paris in 1983, which she was later cast in. "He sexually abused me in the worst possible way when I was just 16 years old, four years after he fled the United States to avoid sentencing for his crime."

In 1999, Lewis had an interview with the UK's News of the World where she asserted that she had a six-month tryst with Polanski when she was 17. Lewis also talked about how Polanski treated her in the relationship: "Roman would say, 'You're gaining weight'. It was ridiculous—I was a thin teenage girl, but I took it seriously and stopped eating. Then I'd overeat, and for years I suffered from bulimia. I know that was the start."

During an interview with Paris Match in 2019, Polanski was asked about Charlotte Lewis' accusations, to which he responded "It's an odious lie!" He also pulled out a press clipping of her 1999 interview, quoting her talk about having sex with many men by the age of 14. In the interview Lewis discloses that she was drugged and prostituted at 14, which led to her sexual promiscuity and her relationship with numerous film stars, including Polanski.

Lewis alleged Polanski led a smear campaign against her, primarily founded on the Paris Match interview, and in September 2022 Polanski was ordered to stand trial in France for a defamation case from Lewis. Polanski was acquitted on 14 May 2024. He was not present in court for the verdict.

2024 civil complaint In June 2023, Polanski was sued in the Los Angeles Superior Court by a woman who alleged that he raped her at his home in 1973 after supplying her with tequila shots. The woman was said to be under the age of 18 at the time. The civil trial date was originally set for August 2025; however, Polanski and the woman settled the suit in October 2024.

Other allegations In October 2017, German actress Renate Langer told Swiss police that Polanski raped her in Gstaad when she was 15, in 1972. The same month, American artist Marianne Barnard accused Polanski of sexually assaulting her in 1975, when she was 10 years old.

In November 2019, French actress Valentine Monnier said Polanski raped her at a ski chalet in Gstaad in 1975 when she was 18.

Filmography

+Directed features Year Title Distribution 1962 Knife in the Water Zespół Filmowy "Kamera" 1965 Repulsion Compton Films 1966 Cul-de-sac Compton-Cameo Films 1967 The Fearless Vampire Killers Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer 1968 Rosemary's Baby Paramount Pictures 1971 Macbeth Columbia Pictures 1972 What? NPF Planfilm 1974 ChinatownParamount Pictures 1976 The Tenant 1979 Tess Columbia Pictures 1986 Pirates The Cannon Group, Inc. 1988 Frantic Warner Bros. 1992 Bitter MoonFine Line Features 1994 Death and the Maiden 1999 The Ninth Gate BAC Films/Araba Films 2002 The Pianist Focus Features 2005 Oliver Twist Pathé 2010 The Ghost Writer StudioCanal UK 2011 Carnage Sony Pictures Classics 2013 Venus in FurBAC Films 2017 Based on a True Story 2019 An Officer and a Spy Gaumont/01 Distribution 2023 The Palace 01 Distribution

Awards and nominations

Directed Academy Award performances Under Polanski's direction, these actors have received Academy Award nominations (and wins) for their performances in their respective roles.