French-Polish director Roman Polanski will go on trial in France today on charges of defaming a British actor who accused him of sexual abuse in the 1980s.
The 90-year-old director is wanted in the US for raping a 13-year-old girl in 1977 and faces several other charges of alleged sexual assault dating back decades and with statutes of limitations.
The director, whose long career included the Oscar-winning films Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown, and The Pianist, fled to Europe in 1978.
Polanski's lawyers said he would not appear in court. His accuser, 56-year-old Charlotte Lewis, is expected to attend, the Guardian reported.
In 2010, Lewis accused Polanski of sexually assaulting her "in the worst possible way" in 1983 when she was 16 years old in Paris for a casting. She starred in his 1986 film Pirates.
The French-born director said it was a "disgusting lie" in an interview with Paris Match magazine in 2019.
During the interview, he pulled out a copy of a 1999 News of the World article in which Lewis said: "I was fascinated by him and wanted to be his lover."
Lewis, who indicated that the quotes attributed to her were inaccurate, filed a defamation complaint, leading to automatic charges against Polanski under French law.
"Discrediting and slandering people is an integral part of Polanski's system and that's exactly what Charlotte Lewis is very bravely challenging," her lawyer Benjamin Shuay told AFP.
Polanski's lawyer, Delphine Maye, said there was no defamation in the Paris Match article. "Polanski has the right to defend himself publicly, as does the woman who accuses him," she said.
The director's lawyers called Stuart White, who authored the 1999 News of the World article, to testify at the trial. White worked as a US correspondent for the now-defunct tabloid before becoming a screenwriter.
The News of the World newspaper, which has repeatedly been accused of defamation, was closed in 2011 after its staff were accused of phone hacking.
Lewis said she decided to speak out in 2010 to counter suggestions by Polanski's legal team that the 1977 case was an isolated incident.
She spoke at the Los Angeles offices of Gloria Allred, a high-profile attorney who has also represented women accusing US producer Harvey Weinstein, actor Bill Cosby, and former US President Donald Trump.
France, Switzerland, and Poland have refused to extradite Polanski to the US. Plans for Polanski to chair the César Awards, the French equivalent of the Oscars, were abandoned in early 2017 under pressure from feminist groups.
Between 2017 and 2019, four other women came forward with allegations that Polanski abused them in the 1970s, three of them minors. He denies all the charges.
Among them is California artist Mariana Barnard, who accused him of sexually assaulting her in 1975 after he asked her to pose nude when she was just 10 years old.
At the 2020 César Awards, actress Adele Hennel protested Polanski receiving an award for his film An Officer and a Spy.
Polanski's latest film The Palace premiered in Venice last summer, but he was not in attendance.
The defamation trial comes at a time when the French film industry has been accused of covering up abuses for too long. At this year's César Awards, actress Judith Godrech slammed the "impunity" in the film industry after she accused two directors of raping her as a teenager. /BGNES
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