A few hours before the launch of the Cannes Film Festival, Roman Polanski was acquitted of defamation this Tuesday, May 14, 2024. The actress was suing him after he described the accusations of rape that she had made against him as an “odious lie “.
The legal clash between Roman Polanski and actress Charlotte Lewis ended this Tuesday. The director, who releases his latest film The Palace tomorrow, was acquitted by the Paris criminal court in the defamation trial between him and British actress Charlotte Lewis. The 56-year-old sued him for defamation after he called the rape accusations she made against him a “heinous lie” in a press interview in 2019.
Charlotte Lewis has announced her intention to appeal. As a reminder, the British actress publicly accused him, in 2010, of having raped her in 1983, on the set of the film Pirates, when she was 16 years old. Roman Polanski is therefore not being tried for the acts of rape, but for defamation for the comments he made in this interview with Paris-Match in 2019.
In an interview with Le Parisien before the trial which took place last March, Charlotte Lewis believed she had been the victim of a “smear campaign”, which, according to her, “was much worse” than the rape, “because defamation has made me suffer every day for fourteen years (…] It’s as if I were living a nightmare from which I couldn’t wake up.” The actress assures that, since then, she has developed post-traumatic syndrome, she suffered a nervous breakdown and was blacklisted as an actress.
Roman Polanski’s lawyer, Me Delphine Meillet, told AFP that her client “has the right to defend himself publicly” against the accusations, while Charlotte Lewis’ counsel, Me Benjamin Chouai, considered that “smearing, discrediting, defaming, that’s an integral part of the Polanski system.” The filmmaker was not present at the time of the trial on March 5.
In December 2019, Roman Polanski was questioned about this affair by Paris Match magazine. He then qualified the actress’ comments as a “heinous lie”: “You see, the first quality of a good liar is an excellent memory. Charlotte Lewis is always mentioned in the list of my accusers without ever highlight its contradictions.
In essence, it refers to an interview that was republished in the tabloid News of the World, in which the actress said she was a prostitute at the age of 14 and that she wanted to “become Polanski’s mistress.” She has since contested this interview, but the actress’s words have been discredited. Asked about the reasons which could have pushed Charlotte Lewis to “wrongly accuse him”, Roman Polanski then replied in 2019: “What do I know? Frustration? We should question psychologists, scientists, historians, what do I know?
In an interview with Le Parisien last March, Charlotte Lewis responded by declaring that since 2010 she had had to deal with “people who think that I prostituted myself at the age of 14, which I never could have done.” to do and which I have never done. She also assures that “Roman Polanski knows very well that I have never been a prostitute or a liar. I just want to clear my name for my son and his future children.”
