PARIS: Roman Polanski, under house arrest in Switzerland on child sex charges, is suing French magazines for publishing photos the director feels infringed his privacy, legal sources said on Tuesday.
The pictures were taken when the 76-year-old Oscar-winner returned to his chalet in the chic Swiss Alpine resort of Gstaad to continue his detention after being freed on bail from a jail in early December.
Polanski and his French actress wife Emmanuelle Seigner want 75,000 euros (110,000 dollars) in damages over the photos and accompanying articles in the VSD and Voici magazines and Le Journal du Dimanche paper, the sources said.
The French-Polish director, who has been wanted in the United States since he fled in 1978 after admitting unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl, is suing under France’s strict privacy laws, which are seen as the strictest in Europe.
French courts have traditionally favoured the rich and famous in their lawsuits over media intrusion, with even paparazzi photos of celebrities on public beaches or out shopping often considered a breach of the law.
A court hearing on the couple’s suit is due to be held in Paris on January 12, the sources said, adding that some of the photos in question showed the couple’s children.
Polanski, who scooped a best director Oscar for “The Pianist” in 2003 after a glittering career whose highlights include “Chinatown” and “Rosemary’s Baby”, won a high-profile 2005 libel case in London against US magazine Vanity Fair.
He accused the publication of defaming him by writing that in 1969 he tried to seduce a model soon after his pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate, was stabbed to death in their Hollywood home.
He gave evidence via video-link from Paris, where he lives, as he feared that if he travelled to Britain he might be extradited to the United States over his 1978 conviction.
It was that conviction that led to Polanski’s arrest on a US warrant when he flew into Switzerland on September 26 this year to attend a film festival.
The director fled the United States in 1978 on the eve of his sentencing for a guilty plea and has never returned.
Polanski’s lawyers have been fighting to have the case dismissed, saying the trial judge who had been due to sentence the director had planned to go back on a previously agreed plea deal after improperly colluding with prosecutors.
But on Monday, a California appeals court rejected Polanski’s bid to have the case dismissed. However, it demanded an “urgent” probe into the filmmaker’s allegations of judicial misconduct.
Swiss authorities have said they will announce a decision in January on whether to extradite Polanski back to the United States.
After weeks in Swiss jail cells, Polanski was this month granted bail of 4.5 million Swiss francs (3 million euros, 4.5 million dollars), surrendered his passport and was fitted with an electronic bracelet to stop him fleeing.
He is not allowed out of the grounds of the snowbound property in Gstaad, where he has been joined by his family.
He has reportedly been editing his latest film, “The Ghost Writer” during detention in order to finish it in time for its world premiere during the Berlin International Film Festival in Germany next February.
- AFP/so
Channel News Asia