EMMANUEL SEIGNER. Guest of the show Sept à Huit on TF1 this Sunday, October 16, actress Emmanuelle Seigner speaks as rarely on the charges against her husband Roman Polanski. Support that does not date from yesterday…
Emmanuelle Seigner is at the center of the “portrait of the week” of Audrey Crespo-Mara, this Sunday, in the program Seven to Eight of TF1. In an exclusive interview, the 56-year-old actress confides in the charges brought against her husband Roman Polanski, accused of raping Samantha Gailey, a thirteen-year-old girl, in 1977. A case for which he will plead guilty to embezzlement of minor. The scandal will pursue the director for decades, forcing him to flee the United States and leading to a surprise arrest in Zurich in September 2009.
In Seven to Eight, Emmanuelle Seigner, who is 33 years younger than Roman Polanski, agreed to reconsider this arrest, followed by ten months’ imprisonment, with the threat of extradition to the United States. However, this is not the first time that the actress has spoken publicly on this subject. In 2018, Emmanuelle Seigner notably distinguished herself by refusing to join the Academy of Oscars in support of her husband Roman Polanski, excluded from this same academy in the wake of the movements
Very uplifted, Emmanuelle Seigner had published an open letter in the Journal du Dimanche: “A feminist, I have always been one, but how can I pretend to ignore that the Academy, a few weeks ago, put wears my husband, Roman Polanski, to satisfy the spirit of the times. The same Academy awarded her the Oscar for best director for The Pianist in 2003. Curious amnesia!” And to continue: “This Academy probably thinks that I am a sufficiently pushy, characterless actress to forget that she has been married for twenty-nine years to one of the greatest directors. is my husband, the father of my children.”
Emmanuelle Seigner then considered to be “the only one who can testify how much he regrets what happened forty years ago”. “Roman is in no way this macho caricature, a symptom of the evil that would ravage the cinema”, she assured. Besides the Samantha Gailey case, eleven women have accused Polanski of sexual assaults that allegedly took place in the 1970s.
Born June 22, 1966, Emmanuelle Seigner is a French actress and singer, best known for her roles in La Vénus à la fur or Le Scaphandre et le Papillon. Having started very young in modeling, Emmanuelle Seigner will change direction as quickly as brutally, after a fortuitous meeting with the director Jean-Luc Godard in a hotel. On the family side, with Roman Polanski, a filmmaker whom she married in August 1989, she is the mother of two children: Morgane, born in 1993 and Elvis, born in 1998.
Emmanuelle Seigner is revealed to the public in the film Détective (1985) by Jean-Luc Godard. She quickly gained international notoriety with her participation in Roman Polanski’s thriller Frantic (1988), alongside Harrison Ford. She will shoot several films with this director who became her husband in 1989. Sublime and disturbing in Lunes de fiel (1992), she was again chosen by Polanski to play Johnny Depp’s evil guide in The Ninth Gate in 1999.
Emmanuelle Seigner still plays in La Môme (2007) by Olivier Dahan and in The code has changed (2008) by Danièle Thompson. In 2011, she appeared in a few hours of spring by Stéphane Brizé with Vincent Lindon. In 2012, she appeared alongside Fabrice Luchini in Dans la maison by François Ozon. She then joined Roman Polanski’s film sets again for his adaptation of Venus in Fur. We see her again on the screens in 2016 in Mend the Living, then in 2017 in Le Couch de Staline and According to a true story, in 2018 in At Eternity’s Gate and in 2019 in J’accuse.
Emmanuelle Seigner was nominated in 2014 for the Lumières Award for Best Actress and the César for Best Actress for La Vénus à la fur. In parallel, the actress released several albums as a singer including “Dingue” (2010) and “Distant Lover” (2014). In 2019 she will be part of the psychedelic rock band L’Epée, with the Limiñanas and Anton Newcombe (The Brian Jonestown Massacre).
Emmanuelle Seigner is the sister of another actress, Mathilde Seigner, and her senior by two years. Although they have always displayed a good relationship, the two sisters diverge in their artistic inclinations and their career choices and have decided never to act in cinema together. “We don’t have the same point of view, we don’t have the same tastes”, explained Emmanuelle Seigner to Citizen K in 2016. “Already small, she listened to Michel Sardou, me Lou Reed. disagree. And yet we get along very well.”
