2024-03-03 09:04:40
Roman Polanski, who won three Oscars and a Palme d’Or, has regularly been accused of sexual assault and rape throughout his career; accusations for all prescribed facts, which he always contested and which did not prevent him from working.
An attack during a casting
In May 2010, in the middle of the Cannes Film Festival, Charlotte Lewis accused him of having “sexually assaulted” her during a casting organized at his home in Paris in 1983, when she was 16 years old. The actress, who notably played under his direction in “Pirates”, released in 1986, had not filed a complaint but testified to the American police.
Nine years later, in December 2019, Roman Polanski described these accusations as a “heinous lie” in an interview with “Paris Match”. “You see, the first quality of a good liar is an excellent memory. Charlotte Lewis is always mentioned in the list of my accusers without ever mentioning [ses] contradictions,” declared the director.
Roman Polanski then mentioned comments attributed to the actress in an interview published twenty years earlier, in 1999, by the British tabloid “News of the World”. “I wanted to be his mistress […] I probably wanted it more than he wanted it,” the article said. A “not accurate” quote, denounced by Charlotte Lewis in 2010.
After Roman Polanski’s interview in “Paris Match”, the actress filed a complaint for defamation, leading to the director’s referral to court – referral is almost automatic in press law, where the merits of the accusations are examined at the hearing.
The “Polanski system”
Roman Polanski’s lawyers contest any defamation in their client’s comments to “Paris Match”: “Roman Polanski has the right to defend himself publicly, in the same way as the person who accuses him,” declared Me Delphine Meillet, who defends with Me Alain Jakubowicz. They called as a witness at the hearing the author of the article on Charlotte Lewis in “News of the World”, Stuart White.
“Smearing, discrediting, defaming it is an integral part of the Polanski system, this is what Charlotte Lewis denounces with great courage,” said the latter’s lawyer, Me Benjamin Chouai.
On the same subject
Forty years later, where is the Polanski affair?
The Franco-Polish director, whose latest film is debated at the Venice Film Festival, has been prosecuted in the United States for the rape of a minor in California since 1977. A look back at a legal series that has lasted for four decades
Born in Paris in 1933, Roman Polanski lives in Europe sheltered from American justice, which considers him a fugitive for more than forty years, following a conviction for illegal sexual relations with a minor. In 2020, he was crowned best director at the César for his film “J’accuse” on the Dreyfus affair, when he had just been accused of rape once more, causing the departure of actress Adèle from the ceremony Haenel. This incident has become one of the symbols of the fight once morest sexual violence in the cinema industry.
In the middle of the Godrèche affair
Roman Polanski has since been extremely discreet. In Switzerland he shot the film “The Palace”, presented last September at the Venice Film Festival – in his absence – but never released in theaters. Very far from his great films like “The Pianist” or “Rosemary’s Baby”, this comedy received a cold and embarrassed reception at press screenings.
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