BRITAIN: Roman Polanski's personal life was put under the spotlight yesterday at the start of a libel trial in which the director testified via video link from Paris to avoid extradition to America for sex with an underage girl.
Polanski (71) is suing the publishers of Vanity Fair magazine for an article in July 2002 alleging he tried to seduce a woman while on his way to his slain wife's funeral in 1969. He was speaking from Paris to avoid the risk of extradition from Britain to the US, where is he wanted after pleading guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977. He cannot be extradited from his native France for the crime.
"You are a fugitive from morality," said lawyer Thomas Shields, representing Vanity Fair publishers Conde Nast.
Polanski had just admitted having "casual sex" with other women before and during his marriage to Tate, as well as once four weeks after her murder and at least one incident of having sex with two females at the same time, one of them aged 15.
"You are putting it in a grotesque way," Polanski responded, before proceedings were adjourned until today.
Lawyers expect the trial, the first in which a libel claimant has sued via video link, to last about a week. Hollywood actress Mia Farrow and Tate's sister Debra are expected to take the witness stand on today.
Earlier in the proceedings, Polanski became emotional as he described his love for Tate, who was murdered by followers of the Charles Manson clan when eight-and-a-half months pregnant. "Sharon was sweet, bright, brilliant. She had a great sense of humour ... she was in my eyes the perfect woman," he said.
He also described his reaction to reading the Vanity Fair article, which includes a passage quoting him telling the "Swedish beauty" he was trying to seduce: "I will make another Sharon Tate of you." "I was in a state of shock," he said. "This was the worst thing ever written about me. It's absolutely not true. But I think it was particularly hurtful, because it dishonours my memory of Sharon," he added.
During Mr Shields cross examination, Polanski defended his promiscuity after his relationship with Tate. "The death of Sharon . . . was an immeasureable shock to me, and in such moments some people turn to drugs, some to alcohol, some go to a monastery, for me it was sex." He also recalled the media reaction to Tate's murder, which he said implied that it was the moral bankruptcy of her and her friends that was to blame. "I felt they were being assassinated for the second time," he said.
Both sides in the case now accept Polanski was not at the restaurant, as alleged, en route to Tate's funeral in Los Angeles, but was there within three or four weeks of the murder. Vanity Fair says the gist of the article is still correct. Polanski says no such incident took place.