Jamie Foxx discusses Roman Polanski
Jamie Foxx attended the Academy of Country Music Awards in Las Vegas. (AP Photo by Jae C. Hong)
Numerous Hollywood celebrities expressed outrage when filmmaker Roman Polanski was recently arrested 32 years after he was convicted of having a sex with a 13-year-old girl. (If you’re not familiar with the Roman Polanski saga, click here to read the back story).
Many celebrities came to Polanski’s defense saying he shouldn’t have been arrested because the underage sex incident occurred more than three decades ago.
However, one celebrity finally stood up and spoke out against Polanski. In an interview with Parade magazine, actor/singer Jamie Foxx gave his opinion on the Polanski incident.
Foxx said “If it had been my daughter who was barely a teenager–my daughter is 15–Roman Polanski would be missing . . . period. It wouldn’t even get to the court case. But, that’s me and I wouldn’t want anyone else to follow that because you should let the justice system work it out. On the other hand, I don’t know Roman Polanski, but maybe if I had a relationship with him my answer would be different. I just think this whole issue is bigger than Roman Polanski.”
I’m glad one celebrity has the guts to stand up and recognize that it’s wrong for a middle-aged man to have sex with a 13-year-old girl. (Polanski was 44 years old at the time of the incident).
I hope more celebrities follow Jamie’s example.
Roman Polanski arrested for sex with underage girl
Thirty-two after having sex with an underage 13-year-old girl, film director Roman Polanski has finally been arrested. The full Associated Press story is posted below via NewsOK.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Director Roman Polanski was arrested by Swiss police for possible extradition to the United States for having sex in 1977 with a 13-year-old girl, authorities said Sunday.
Polanski was flying in to receive an honorary award at the Zurich Film Festival when he was apprehended Saturday at the airport, the Swiss Justice Ministry said in a statement. It said U.S. authorities have sought the arrest of the 76-year-old around the world since 2005.
“There was a valid arrest request and we knew when he was coming,” ministry spokesman Guido Balmer told The Associated Press. “That’s why he was taken into custody.”
Balmer said the U.S. would now be given time to make a formal extradition request.
Polanski fled the U.S. in 1978, a year after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with the underage girl.
The director of such classic films as “Chinatown” and “Rosemary’s Baby” has asked a U.S. appeals court in California to overturn a judges’ refusal to throw out his case. He claims misconduct by the now-deceased judge who had arranged a plea bargain and then reneged on it.
The Swiss statement said Polanski was officially in “provisional detention for extradition,” but added that he would not be transferred to U.S. authorities until all proceedings are completed. Polanski can contest his detention and any extradition decision in the Swiss courts, it said.
Polanski has faced a U.S. arrest request since 1978 and has lived for the past three decades in France, where his career has continued to flourish. He received a directing Oscar in absentia for the 2002 movie “The Pianist.” He was not extradited from France because his crime reportedly was not covered under the U.S.’s treaties with the country.
In France, Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand said he was “dumbfounded” by Polanski’s arrest, adding that he “strongly regrets that a new ordeal is being inflicted on someone who has already experienced so many of them.”
Mitterrand’s ministry said Sunday in a statement that he is in contact with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, “who is following the case with great attention and shares the minister’s hope that the situation can be quickly resolved.”
A native of France who was taken to Poland by his parents, Polanski escaped Krakow’s Jewish ghetto as a child and lived off the charity of strangers. His mother died at the Auschwitz Nazi death camp.
He worked his way into filmmaking in Poland, gaining an Oscar nomination for best foreign-language film in 1964 for his “Knife in the Water.” Offered entry to Hollywood, he directed the classic “Rosemary’s Baby” in 1968.
But his life was shattered again in 1969 when his wife, actress Sharon Tate, and four other people were gruesomely murdered by followers of Charles Manson. She was eight months pregnant.
He went on to make another American classic, “Chinatown,” released in 1974.
In 1977, he was accused of raping the teenager while photographing her during a modeling session. The girl said Polanski plied her with champagne and part of a Quaalude pill at Jack Nicholson’s house while the actor was away. She said that, despite her protests, he performed oral sex, intercourse and sodomy on her.
Polanski was allowed to plead guilty to one of six charges, unlawful sexual intercourse, and was sent to prison for 42 days of evaluation.
Lawyers agreed that would be his full sentence, but the judge tried to renege on the plea bargain. Aware the judge would sentence him to more prison time and require his voluntary deportation, Polanski fled to France.
The victim, Samantha Geimer, who long ago identified herself publicly, has joined in Polanski’s bid for dismissal, saying she wants the case to be over. She sued Polanski and reached an undisclosed settlement.
Festival organizers said Polanski’s detention had caused “shock and dismay,” but that they would go ahead with Sunday’s planned retrospective of the director’s work.
The Swiss Directors Association sharply criticized authorities for what it deemed “not only a grotesque farce of justice, but also an immense cultural scandal.”
