- In full:
- Roman Raymond Polanski
- Original name:
- Rajmund Roman Thierry Polański
- Awards And Honors:
- Academy Award (2003)
- Notable Family Members:
- spouse Sharon Tate
Roman Polanski
What is Roman Polanski most famous for?
How was Roman Polanski related to Sharon Tate?
What has Roman Polanski been accused of?
Roman Polanski (born August 18, 1933, Paris, France) is a French Polish director, scriptwriter, and actor who, through a variety of film genres, has explored themes of isolation, desire, and absurdity. Though he was once celebrated for such critically acclaimed films as Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and Chinatown (1974), Polanski’s career has since been overshadowed by charges that he raped a minor in 1977 and other subsequent allegations of sexual assault. Facing the prospect of a decades-long prison term, he fled the United States for France in 1978 and remains a fugitive.
(Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film preservation.)
Early life and work
Shortly after the young Polanski’s family settled in Kraków, Poland, his parents were interned in a Nazi concentration camp, where his mother died. Polanski escaped internment and survived the war years by finding occasional refuge with Catholic families and often fending for himself. At age 14 he appeared on the stage, later acting in films directed by Andrzej Wajda, the leading figure in the Polish film revival of the 1950s.
Polanski studied directing at the State School of Cinema in Łódź. By the time he graduated in 1959, he had already directed several award-winning short films. He made the French film Le Gros et le maigre (1961; The Fat and the Lean) and then returned to Poland to direct his first full-length feature, Nóż w wodzie (1962; Knife in the Water), a tense psychological study of sexual rivalry that brought him international fame.
Success and tragedy in the 1960s and ’70s: Rosemary’s Baby and Chinatown
After he left Poland in 1962, Polanski made several major films in Great Britain and the United States. Repulsion (1965) traces the psychotic breakdown of a young woman whose fear and loathing of sex drive her to commit several murders. The dark comedies Cul-de-Sac (1966) and The Fearless Vampire Killers; or, Pardon Me but Your Teeth Are in My Neck (1967) followed. In 1968 Polanski directed his first American film, Rosemary’s Baby, a thriller about a young New York City woman who unwittingly bears a child by the Devil. The film was a huge success and became a classic.
The following year Polanski’s second wife, Hollywood actress Sharon Tate, who was pregnant at the time, was brutally murdered (along with four others) by followers of Charles Manson at the couple’s rented home in Los Angeles (see Tate murders). The violence of her death influenced his next film, Macbeth (1971), a gory yet artistically effective adaptation of the play by William Shakespeare. Chinatown (1974) reinvigorated the moribund film noir genre and is considered a classic of neo-noir. These films are notable for their careful buildup of mood and suspense, their subtle handling of human psychology, and their fascination with evil in its various forms.
Sexual assault charges
In March 1977 Polanski was taken into custody, charged with raping a 13-year-old girl after drugging her during a private photo shoot. Though he denied the charges at the arraignment that month, Polanski pleaded guilty in August to a different, lesser charge of unlawful sex with a minor as part of a plea bargain to avoid a trial and a lengthy prison sentence. However, after privately discovering that the judge hearing the case intended to disregard the plea bargain and sentence him to prison, Polanski jumped bail and fled to France, where he has remained active in both the theater and motion pictures, protected from extradition on account of being a French citizen.
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Polanski has also been accused of sexual assault by at least six other women, most of whom claimed they were minors when he allegedly abused them. Polanski has denied the accusations.
For more than 30 years U.S. authorities sought Polanski’s extradition on the 1977 rape charges, and in September 2009 he was arrested in Zürich, Switzerland. Polanski was later placed under house arrest as Swiss courts reviewed the extradition request. In July 2010 Swiss authorities rejected the request, and Polanski was subsequently freed from house arrest. These events are the focus of the documentary Roman Polanski: Odd Man Out (2012). The earlier Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired (2008) explores allegations of misconduct by the presiding judge in the original case.
Later works
His subsequent films include Tess (1979), based on Thomas Hardy’s novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles; Frantic (1988), a suspense film; Bitter Moon (1992), an erotic comedy; and Death and the Maiden (1994), a psychological drama adapted from a play by the Chilean author Ariel Dorfman. In 1989 Polanski married the French actress Emmanuelle Seigner, who starred in his films Frantic (1988), Bitter Moon (1992), The Ninth Gate (1999), La Vénus à la fourrure (2013; Venus in Fur), and D’après une histoire vraie (2017; Based on a True Story).
The Pianist (2002), which tells the true story of Władysław Szpilman’s survival of the Nazi occupation of Poland during World War II, shared much in common with Polanski’s own childhood experience and earned the Palme d’Or at the Cannes international film festival and a best director Academy Award for Polanski. It was followed by Oliver Twist (2005), an adaptation of Charles Dickens’s classic novel, and The Ghost Writer (2010), a thriller involving a former politician and the author who is writing his memoir. For the latter movie Polanski won his third French César award for best director.
He then directed Carnage (2011), a biting comedy in which two sets of parents tangle over approaches to child-rearing; the film was based on Yasmina Reza’s play Le Dieu du carnage. In the drama J’accuse (2019; An Officer and a Spy), Polanski explored the real-life Dreyfus affair, which involved a Jewish army captain whose 1894 conviction for treason in France attracted controversy following allegations of antisemitism. His next film, the black comedy The Palace (2023), was a critical and commercial disappointment.
In addition to his film work, Polanski has directed and occasionally acted in theatrical productions. His autobiography, Roman, was published in 1984.