Oscar winner’s regret over petition to free jailed Polanksi
NATALIE PORTMAN has said she “very much” regrets signing a petition in 2009 calling for the release of Roman Polanski from a Swiss prison.
The Oscar-winning actress said in an interview that she did not think before signing the document, which called for the film director’s release from a Zurich prison and an end to attempts to extradite him to the US.
“I very much regret it,” she told Buzzfeed. “I take responsibility for not thinking about it enough.
“Someone I respected gave it to me, and said, ‘I signed this. Will you too?’ And I was like, sure. It was a mistake.”
Polanski, now 84, fled the US in 1978 while awaiting sentencing for drugging, raping and sodomising 13-yearold Samantha Geimer, and continues to avoid extradition by living in France and his native Poland.
He was jailed in Switzerland owing to the warrant from the US, but later freed. Laura Palumbo, a spokesman for the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, said that Portman should be praised for admitting her mistake.
“I think her stance exemplifies how complicated this #Metoo moment is,” she told The Daily Telegraph.
“Not only is it about the dynamics of this industry, it’s also about the complex nature of what a person we like and admire professionally has done, and how we react. Her actions are really helpful for the general public, as we go through a similar thing. But we cannot compartmentalise their actions, because doing so silences victims and normalises sexual assault.”
♦ The man behind Disney’s Broadway musical of the film Frozen has been accused of sexual harassment.
Tom Schumacher, the president and producer of Disney’s theatrical group, was reported in The Wall Street Journal to have allegedly made comments about subordinates’ sexual attractiveness, held discussions about pornography and walked through the office in a bathrobe boasting he had nothing on underneath.