Roman Polanski Biography Quotes 13 Report mistakes

Early Life and Wartime Survival
Roman Polanski was born on August 18, 1933, in Paris, France, to Polish parents who returned with him to Krakow shortly before World War II. He is of Jewish heritage, and his childhood was marked by the Holocaust. During the Nazi occupation, his mother was deported and died at Auschwitz, while his father survived imprisonment in concentration camps. Roman survived by living under false identity and moving between families in the countryside, witnessing violence that would later inform his sensibility as a filmmaker. After the war he reunited with his father in Krakow, and the trauma, displacement, and moral ambiguity of those years became a permanent undercurrent in his work.

Education and Early Work
Fascinated by cinema and theater, Polanski enrolled at the National Film School in Lodz, Poland. He gained early attention for inventive short films such as Two Men and a Wardrobe and The Fat and the Lean, where he honed a precise visual style and a taste for dark humor and psychological tension. His feature debut, Knife in the Water (1962), shot with a minimal cast and a heightened sense of claustrophobia, became an international milestone for Polish cinema and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. Composer Krzysztof Komeda became a vital collaborator in this era, crafting unnerving soundscapes that intensified Polanski's interest in isolation, desire, and menace.

Breakthrough in Britain and Europe
Polanski left Poland for Western Europe and directed Repulsion (1965) in the United Kingdom with Catherine Deneuve, a landmark of psychological horror set almost entirely inside a cramped apartment. Cul-de-sac (1966), with Donald Pleasence and Francoise Dorleac, further explored absurdist cruelty and confinement. He then made The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967), a horror spoof that demonstrated his range and dark wit. Throughout these films, Komeda's music and Polanski's precise camerawork cultivated an atmosphere of dread and irony that would become his signature.

Hollywood and International Fame
In 1968, Polanski directed Rosemary's Baby in the United States for producer William Castle with strong studio support from Robert Evans at Paramount. Starring Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, and Ruth Gordon, the film became a cultural phenomenon and an enduring classic of psychological horror. Its success solidified Polanski's international reputation for blending the fantastical with mundane urban terror. He followed it with Macbeth (1971), financed by Playboy Productions, a stark Shakespeare adaptation steeped in paranoia and violence, and with What? (1972), an eccentric, less well-received experiment.

Personal Relationships and Tragedy
Polanski's personal life profoundly intersected with his art. He married actress Sharon Tate in 1968 after meeting her during The Fearless Vampire Killers. Her murder in 1969 by followers of Charles Manson shocked the world and scarred Polanski's life and public image. In the aftermath, he poured himself into work, and Chinatown (1974), written by Robert Towne, produced by Robert Evans, and starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway, became a landmark of modern noir. Polanski's cameo as a knife-wielding thug echoed his penchant for inserting himself into narratives of danger and moral rot. He later directed The Tenant (1976), starring himself and Isabelle Adjani, a haunting return to the apartment-as-prison motif.

Criminal Case and Exile
In 1977, Polanski was arrested in Los Angeles and charged with multiple offenses involving a 13-year-old girl, Samantha Geimer. He ultimately pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor. Before sentencing, in 1978, he fled the United States. The ensuing decades were defined by a fugitive legal status: he lived and worked primarily in France, which does not extradite its citizens in such cases. The case triggered persistent legal disputes and extradition attempts in several countries. In 2009, he was arrested in Switzerland on a U.S. warrant and placed under house arrest in Gstaad before Swiss authorities declined to extradite him in 2010. Courts in Poland later also rejected extradition requests. The matter continued to shape his public standing, and in 2018 he was expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

European Period and Major Works
Operating outside Hollywood, Polanski made some of his most ambitious projects in Europe. Tess (1979), dedicated to Sharon Tate, starred Nastassja Kinski and won multiple Academy Awards. Frantic (1988), with Harrison Ford and Emmanuelle Seigner, was a taut Paris-set thriller. Bitter Moon (1992) explored destructive desire, while Death and the Maiden (1994), with Sigourney Weaver and Ben Kingsley, probed memory, justice, and political trauma. The Ninth Gate (1999), featuring Johnny Depp, combined occult intrigue with wry detachment.

The Pianist (2002), adapted from Wladyslaw Szpilman's memoir by screenwriter Ronald Harwood, was a profound return to Polanski's wartime memories. Starring Adrien Brody, it won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and three Academy Awards, including Best Director for Polanski and Best Actor for Brody. The film's restrained style and moral clarity marked a culmination of themes he had been refining since his youth. He followed with Oliver Twist (2005) and The Ghost Writer (2010), with Ewan McGregor and Pierce Brosnan, a political thriller praised for its craftsmanship. Later films included Venus in Fur (2013), Based on a True Story (2017), and J'accuse (An Officer and a Spy) (2019), about the Dreyfus Affair, which earned significant awards in France amid renewed public debate. He continued working into the 2020s, including The Palace (2023).

Family and Collaborators
Polanski married Emmanuelle Seigner in 1989; together they have two children, Morgane Polanski and Elvis Polanski. Seigner appeared in several of his films, and their creative partnership became a fixture of his later career. Across decades, Polanski worked repeatedly with actors such as Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, Mia Farrow, Isabelle Adjani, Harrison Ford, Ewan McGregor, and Mathieu Amalric, and with producers like Robert Evans and Claude Berri. Composer Krzysztof Komeda was crucial in his early period, and his death in 1969 left a lasting void in Polanski's creative circle.

Themes, Style, and Influence
Polanski's films often trap characters in confined spaces, exposing paranoia, guilt, and the collapse of ordinary life into threat. He is known for choreographing camera movement with exacting discipline, using architectural space to dramatize power. The apartment trilogy of Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby, and The Tenant exemplifies his approach, while Knife in the Water and Chinatown show his ability to bend genre conventions into moral parables. His work has influenced generations of filmmakers who study his composition, pacing, and the way he merges personal dread with social critique.

Public Reception and Legacy
Roman Polanski remains a polarizing figure: celebrated for artistic achievement and condemned for his criminal conduct and flight from U.S. justice. Honors such as the Palme d'Or, multiple Cesars, BAFTAs, and the Academy Award for The Pianist testify to his stature in film history, while his legal case has led to boycotts, protests, and institutional censure. The tension between his contributions to cinema and the gravity of his offenses defines the public conversation around him. Regardless of ongoing controversy, his films continue to be studied for their craft, thematic consistency, and the way they refract a life marked by survivorhood, loss, notoriety, and an unwavering, if troubled, devotion to the art of cinema.

Our collection contains 13 quotes who is written by Roman, under the main topics: Love - Parenting - Honesty & Integrity - Anxiety - Movie.

Other people realated to Roman: Bruce Lee (Actor), Jack Nicholson (Actor), Peter Bart (Editor), Francesca Annis (Actress), Sharon Tate (Actress), Adrien Brody (Actor)