A French court on May 14 acquitted filmmaker Roman Polanski of defaming British actress Charlotte Lewis after she accused him of raping her when she was a teenager. Lewis, 56, alleged in 2010 that the Franco-Polish director had sexually abused her in his Paris apartment in 1983 when she was 16 years old after she had travelled to the French capital for a casting session. She starred in his 1986 film Pirates.
Charlotte sewed for defamation after Polanski called her allegations a “heinous lie” in a 2019 interview with Paris Match magazine. Paris Match also wrote that Polanski cited a quote attributed to Lewis in a 1999 interview she gave to the News Of The World, in which she allegedly remarked, ‘I wanted to be his mistress… I probably desired him more than he did me.” Lewis disputed the quote’s accuracy. She said, she would appeal the verdict.
Roman Polanski, director of such classics as Chinatown, Rosemary’s Baby, The Pianist and Carnage, fled California for Europe in 1978 after pleading guilty of having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl but before being sentenced.