Roman Polanski has given his first ever extensive interview, to PAris Match. It’s a wide ranging interview about his 1978 rape case, Sharon Tate, his movie now about the Dreyfus affair, his family. He says below that he feels like a “leper” in Hollywood, will never return to the US for fear of being arrested. He still talks to his old pals, he says, although it’s unclear whether that’s true. Polanski says he blames Harvey Weinstein for dredging up the rape case in 2003, when his movie “The Pianist” was pitted against Harvey’s “Chicago” at the Oscars. But Polanski forgets that Weinstein produced a letter with the names of 200 directors who backed Polanski when he was in trouble, took out an ad in the New York Times, and convened a gathering of dozens of directors in New York to support Polanski.
The Academy of Oscars has excluded you in 2018. Does this make you bitter?
It makes me rather smile. For years, they gave me nominations. In 2003, they ended up giving me an Oscar, all after the events for which they saw me now. It indicates the change of time.
Do you feel like an outcast in Hollywood? Worse, a leper.
Your friends at the time, Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, do not support you anymore?
When we call ourselves, we talk about our families, movies, not that kind of thing.
Will you ever return to the United States?
No. If I did, I would be thrown into jail when there was no motive. And do not forget that all these crazy ideas that I reproach come from this country, which has become crazy. Recently, on my Google page, someone added me a third child with the name of the baby that Sharon was carrying, with whom she was buried. I had to send lawyer’s letters, threatening a lawsuit to have him removed. Today, someone can rewrite your biography, and you can do almost nothing …
