Roman Polanski

Raymond Roman Thierry Polański (born 18 August 1933) is a French and Polish film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor.

Over his career he has faced both controversy and acclaim.

He is the recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, two British Academy Film Awards, ten César Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, as well as the Golden Lion, Golden Bear and a Palme d'Or.

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 mother was Jewish, 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.

Polanski's parents were both agnostics.

Polanski later stated that he was an atheist.

Born in Paris, Polanski's Polish Jewish parents moved the family from his birthplace 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 Jewish heritage.

The Polański family moved back to Kraków, Poland, in early 1937, and were living there when World War II began with the invasion of Poland.

Kraków was soon occupied by the German forces, and the racist and anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws made the Polańskis targets of persecution, forcing them into the Kraków Ghetto, along with thousands of the city's Jews.

Around the age of six, Polanski attended primary school for only a few weeks, until "all the Jewish children were abruptly expelled", writes biographer Christopher Sandford.

That initiative was soon followed by the requirement that all Jewish children over the age of twelve wear white armbands, with a blue Star of David imprinted, for visual identification.

After he was expelled, Polanski would not be allowed to enter another classroom for six years.

Polanski witnessed both the ghettoization of Kraków's Jews into a compact area of the city, and the subsequent deportation of all the ghetto's Jews to German death camps.

He watched as his father was taken away.

He remembers from age six, one of his first experiences of the terrors to follow:

"I had just been visiting my grandmother ... when I received a foretaste of things to come. At first, I didn't know what was happening. I simply saw people scattering in all directions. Then I realized why the street had emptied so quickly. Some women were being herded along it by German soldiers. Instead of running away like the rest, I felt compelled to watch.

One older woman at the rear of the column couldn't keep up.

A German officer kept prodding her back into line, but she fell down on all fours ... Suddenly a pistol appeared in the officer's hand.

There was a loud bang, and blood came welling out of her back.

I ran straight into the nearest building, squeezed into a Smelly recess beneath some wooden stairs, and didn't come out for hours.

Polanski's first feature-length film, Knife in the Water (1962), was made in Poland and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

After living in France for a few years, he moved to the United Kingdom, where he directed his first three English-language feature-length films: Repulsion (1965), Cul-de-sac (1966), and The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967).

In 1968 he married actress Sharon Tate and the following year his pregnant wife was murdered with four friends by members of the Manson Family.

He moved to the United States and cemented his status in the film industry by directing Hollywood classics such as Rosemary's Baby (1968), and Chinatown (1974).

His other critically acclaimed films include Macbeth (1971), Tess (1979), The Ghost Writer (2010), Carnage (2011), Venus in Fur (2013), and An Officer and a Spy (2019).

Over his six decades long career Polanski has made 23 feature films to date.

In 1977, Polanski was arrested 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.

Further allegations of abuse have been made by other women with Polanski facing a lawsuit for sexual assault in 2025.

He won the Academy Award for Best Director for The Pianist (2002).