Roman Polanski

The Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted to expel director Roman Polanski from its membership ranks. The decision to remove Polanski was made at a scheduled board meeting on May 1st 2018.

Polanski was appointed to serve as the president of the César Awards in 2017, but withdrew from this position after public protests in France. The Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma had selected Polanski to serve in this honorary role and announced: "Artist, film-maker, producer, screenwriter, actor, director - there are many words to define Roman Polanski. But there is only one to express our admiration and enchantment: Thank you, Mr President." Laurence Rossignol, the French minister for families, children and women's rights, called the Académie's decision "shocking and surprising," according to the New York Times. The backlash to the decision of the Académie resulted in over 61,000 signatures on a protest petition, because of the rape charges Polanski still faced in the United States, until Polanski finally withdrew. "In order not to disturb the César ceremony, which should be centered on cinema and not on its choice of host, Roman Polanski has decided not to accept the invitation," Hervé Temime said in a statement to the media.

Polanski was set to pick up a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 67th Locarno Film Festival in 2014, but he withdrew after Swiss politicians and newspapers accused him of being a paedophile. Switzerland's Christian Democratic party released a statement urging its members to avoid participation in the planned awards ceremony, while Ticino politician Fiorenzo Dadò described Polanski on Facebook as a "pedophile who drugged and raped a girl and is now being received with full honours". Locarno organisers labelled the protests "unacceptable interference of some in the artistic liberty of the festival", adding: "We are greatly saddened that the public will thereby be deprived of an important opportunity for cultural enrichment." Festival artistic director Carlo Chatrian told the Hollywood Reporter: "It's sad when an artist cannot express himself. I understand his decision and I respect it. At the same time, I hope that this will be for the festival a chance to renew the fact that festivals are a meeting point and a place of freedom." He added: "Of course, when you use words like pedophile, you cannot say anything against that. But Polanski's not a pedophile.".

Convicted of sodomy and statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl after plea bargaining, Polanski served time in prison in California, but prison officials released him sooner than judge Laurence J. Rittenband's original sentence had intended. The judge then sought to have Polanski brought to court again for further sentencing. Rather than do so, Polanski fled to Europe to avoid and escape a second arrest and incarceration. In 2013, his former victim, Samantha Geimer - who was 50 years old and had long ago forgiven him for the crime - detailed her story in her autobiography "The Girl" (2013).

In September 2011, Polanski returned to Zurich, Switzerland - the city where he was arrested in 2009 - to finally accept the Zurich International Film Festival's Lifetime Achievement Award.

On 26 September 2009, Polanski was detained by Swiss police at Zurich Airport while trying to enter Switzerland. Since this was only 1 year and 7 months after the release of Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired (2008) at Sundance (Jan.18, 2008), there is reason to believe, that the documentary was actually what caused the new arrest warrant, because it dared to question the legality of Polanski's L.A. trial in 1977 and 1978 before he fled to France on 1st February 1978. Polanski and his lawyers also tried to use the new evidence from this documentary to attack the L.A. justice system, which must have awakened their new interest in the old case, too.

In February 2007 it was announced that Polanski would direct a $130m adaptation of Robert Harris' novel "Pompeii", first published in 2003. Orlando Bloom and Scarlett Johansson were rumoured to be starring, but in September 2007 he left the project due to concerns over the threatened Screen Actors Guild strike.

The Jeroen Krabbé character in Snuff-Movie (2005) - a European film director whose pregnant wife was murdered by a hippy cult in the 1960s - appears to have been based on Polanski.

Is portrayed by Marek Probosz in Helter Skelter (2004).

Received his first 'Best Director' Academy Award for The Pianist (2002) nearly six months after the awards ceremony, since the director would be immediately arrested due to outstanding warrants stemming from fleeing the US to avoid further imprisonment after his 1978 statutory rape conviction. His friend Harrison Ford flew to France to present Polanski the award at the 29th American Film Festival of Deauville on September 11, 2003.

It wasn't until The Pianist (2002) that Polanski came back to full form. For that movie, he won nearly all the most important film awards, including the Oscar for Best Director, Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or, the BAFTA and Cesar Award.

Polanski was set to direct "The Double", a modern-day, comedic adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel about a man whose life is taken over by a doppelganger. Star John Travolta, who was being paid $17 million, was set to play the lead, alongside Isabelle Adjani, John Goodman, and Jean Reno. The film shoot was set to begin in Paris in June 1996. Lili Fini Zanuck and Todd Black were producing, Jeremy Leven had written the screenplay, and other personnel such as director of photography Robert Richardson and production designer Pierre Guffroy were in place. Just nine days before the beginning of principal photography, and with around $15 million already spent on the project, Travolta flew back to the U.S. following an argument with Polanski. Travolta claimed that the shooting screenplay had been significantly altered from the one he had originally read. Following Travolta's departure, Steve Martin was quickly hired to replace him, but Isabelle Adjani said she was only prepared to work with Travolta, and she, too, left the film. The project collapsed shortly afterwards.

He has two children with Emmanuelle Seigner: Morgane Polanski (born January 20, 1993) and Elvis Polanski (born April 12, 1998).

President of the 'Official Competition' jury at the 44th Cannes International Film Festival in 1991.

After Polanski fled American justice, the judge over his case swore to put him behind bars again. Though the judge died in 1989, the director still cannot return to the U.S. as he would be arrested immediately.

Polanski's two most expensive features (adjusted for inflation) were Pirates (1986) and Oliver Twist (2005). Ironically, these films were also his biggest commercial flops and received only mixed reviews.

Introduced to his wife Emmanuelle Seigner by casting director Dominique Besnehard in 1985. She was 19 and he was 52.

In 1984, he published his autobiography, "Roman by Polanski". In it, he teasingly referred to girls as being "sexy, pert, and thoroughly human" and to appreciating Gstaad, Switzerland, on the grounds that the city is populated with "hundreds of fresh-faced, nubile young girls of all nationalities".

After Tess (1979), which was awarded several Oscars and Cesars, his works in 1980s and 1990s became intermittent and rarely approached the caliber of his earlier films.

Was one of the judges in the Miss Universe pageant in 1976.

In 1974, he again made a US release - it was Chinatown (1974). It seemed the beginning of a promising Hollywood career, but after his conviction for the sodomy of a 13-year old girl, Polanski fled from he USA to avoid prison.

However, after the brutal murder of his wife, Sharon Tate, by the Manson Family in 1969, the director decided to return to Europe.

In 1968, Polanski went to Hollywood, where he made the psychological thriller, Rosemary's Baby (1968).

The next two films, Repulsion (1965) and Cul-de-sac (1966), made in England and co-written by Brach, won respectively Silver and then Golden Bear awards at the Berlin International Film Festival.

His feature debut, Knife in the Water (1962), was one of the first Polish post-war films not associated with the war theme. It was also the first movie from Poland to get an Oscar nomination for best foreign film. Though already a major Polish filmmaker, Polanski chose to leave the country and headed to France. While down-and-out in Paris, he befriended young scriptwriter, Gérard Brach, who eventually became his long-time collaborator.

His early shorts such as Two Men and a Wardrobe (1958), Le gros et le maigre (1961) and Mammals (1962), showed his taste for black humor and interest in bizarre human relationships.

In the 1950s, he took up acting, appearing in Andrzej Wajda's A Generation (1955) before studying at the Lodz Film School.

His favourite films include: Odd Man Out (1947), Hamlet (1948), Citizen Kane (1941) and 8½ (1963).

At the war's end in 1945, he reunited with his father who sent him to a technical school, but young Polanski seemed to have already chosen another career.

On Germany's invasion in 1939, as a family of mostly Jewish heritage, they were all sent to the Krakow ghetto. His parents were then captured and sent to two different concentration camps: His father to Mauthausen-Gusen in Austria, where he survived the war, and his mother to Auschwitz where she was murdered. Roman witnessed his father's capture and then, at only 7, managed to escape the ghetto and survive the war, at first wandering through the Polish countryside and pretending to be a Roman-Catholic kid visiting his relatives. Although this saved his life, he was severely mistreated suffering nearly fatal beating which left him with a fractured skull. Local people usually ignored the cinemas where German films were shown, but Polanski seemed little concerned by the propaganda and often went to the movies. As the war progressed, Poland became increasingly war-torn and he lived his life as a tramp, hiding in barns and forests, eating whatever he could steal or find. Still under 12 years old, he encountered some Nazi soldiers who forced him to hold targets while they shot at them.

His parents returned to Poland from France in 1936, three years before World War II began.

Roman Polanski is a Polish film director, producer, writer and actor. Having made films in Poland, Britain, France and the USA, he is considered one of the few truly international filmmakers. Roman Polanski was born in Paris in 1933.

Was voted the 26th Greatest Director of all time by Entertainment Weekly.

Shortly before her murder, wife Sharon Tate gave Polanski a copy of Thomas Hardy's 1891 novel "Tess of the d'Urbervilles", and he planned to film it with her. When he finally made the movie Tess (1979), he dedicated it to her.