POLANSKI, ROMAN

born Aug. 18, 1933, Paris, France motion-picture director, scriptwriter, and actor who was one of the more innovative filmmakers of the 1960s and '70s. Shortly after the young Polanski's family resettled in Krakw, Pol., after having lived in France, his parents were interned in a Nazi concentration camp, where his mother died. At the age of 14, Polanski appeared on the stage, later acting in films directed by Andrzej Wajda, a leader in the Polish film revival of the 1950s. Polanski studied directing at the State School of Cinema in Ldz. By the time he graduated in 1959, he had already directed several award-winning short films. He made the French film Le Gros et le maigre (1961; The Fat and the Lean) and then returned to Poland to direct his first full-length feature, Nz w wodzie (1962; Knife in the Water), a tense psychological study of sexual rivalry that brought him international fame. After he left Poland in 1962, Polanski made several major films in Great Britain and the United States. Repulsion (1965) traces the psychotic breakdown of a young woman whose fear and loathing of sex drive her to commit several murders. Rosemary's Baby (1968) is a thriller about a young New York City matron who unwittingly bears a child by the devil. Macbeth (1971) is a gory but artistically effective adaptation of the play by William Shakespeare. Chinatown (1974) was one of the finest detective films made in the 1970s. These films were notable for their careful buildup of mood and suspense, their subtle handling of human psychology, and their fascination with evil in its various forms. Polanski's second wife, the Hollywood actress Sharon Tate, was one of the victims of a group murder in 1969. In 1977 Polanski was arrested and eventually pleaded guilty to a charge of unlawful intercourse with a minor. He subsequently jumped bail and fled to France, where he remained active in both the theatre and motion pictures. His subsequent films included Tess (1979), based on Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Frantic (1988), a suspense film, Bitter Moon (1992), an erotic comedy, and Death and the Maiden (1995), a psychological drama adapted from a play by the Chilean author Ariel Dorfman. In 1989 Polanski married the French actress Emmanuelle Seigner, who starred in both Frantic and Bitter Moon. Polanski's autobiography, Roman, was published in 1984.