Roman Polanski won best director at France’s Oscars Friday for his film “An Officer and a Spy,” prompting several actresses attending the awards to walk out in protest of his recent and past rape allegations.
Polanski did not attend the 2020 Cesar awards in Paris, but his being honored still prompted protests inside and outside the Salle Pleyel concert hall.
Among those who left the venue after his award was announced was actress Adele Haenel, who last year accused another director of sexual harassment that began when she was 12 years old and sexual assault when she was 15.
Polanki’s film, a retelling of the Dreyfus affair — a political scandal from late 19th century France — had gained 12 nominations, angering women’s rights groups who pledged to disrupt the ceremony.
The backlash pressured Polanski to skip the awards while deriding his accusers as “unhealthy minds.”
“Fantasies of unhealthy minds are now treated as proven facts,” Polanski, 86, said in a statement Thursday. “We know how this evening will play out.”
Polanski is still wanted in the US for the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl in 1977. He pleaded guilty but fled the country while awaiting sentencing.
Last year French actress Valentine Monnier told Le Parisien that Polanski violently raped her when she was 18 in 1975 at a ski chalet in Gstaad, Switzerland.
Several people corroborated her story while Polanski denied the accusation.
With Post wires