Polanski’s wife spurns Oscars Academy after his expulsion

THE wife of Roman Polanski, the controversial film director, spurned an invitation to join the body that awards the Oscars, weeks after it expelled her husband, accusing the institute of “hypocrisy”.

Emmanuelle Seigner, 52, a French actress, was one of 928 figures in the film industry invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences last month, in an effort to increase female and ethnic representation and counter criticism that its members are mainly white men.

Polanski, 84, was only thrown out of the Academy two months ago, despite admitting to unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl in the Los Angeles home of the film star Jack Nicholson in 1977, when he was 43. He subsequently fled the US because he feared he was about to receive a lengthy jail term. He is suing the Academy.

Polanski was expelled following a sea change in Hollywood prompted by the #Metoo movement that led to the downfall of Harvey Weinstein, and hundreds of allegations of sexual assault against powerful men in the entertainment industry.

In an open letter published in the French newspaper, Le Journal du Dimanche, Seigner says: “I have always been a feminist. But how can I pretend to ignore that the Academy a few weeks ago kicked out my husband, Roman Polanski, to satisfy the zeitgeist – the very same Academy which in 2003 awarded him an Oscar for The Pianist! A curious case of amnesia!

“This Academy probably thinks that I am enough of a social climbing, spineless actress to forget that I have been married to one of the world’s greatest directors for 29 years”.

Polanski has been a fugitive from the US justice system for four decades.