Controversial director Roman Polanski will go on trial in Paris on Tuesday for defamation after he described as “hateful lies” sexual assault allegations made against him by British actress Charlotte Lewis, AFP reported, News.ro reported.

The 90-year-old French-Polish director, who lives in Paris, will not appear at the hearing in the 17th Chamber of the Criminal Court, his lawyers said.

56-year-old Charlotte Lewis, who lives in Great Britain, will be present.

Roman Polanski, winner of three Oscars and a Palme d’Or, was regularly accused of sexual assault and rape throughout his career. All these charges were overdue, but he always denied them, and they did not prevent him from working.

In May 2010, in the middle of the Cannes Film Festival, Charlotte Lewis accused him of “sexual assault” during a casting held at his home in Paris in 1983, when she was 16 years old.

Roman Polanski called the accusations “outrageous lies”

The actress, who starred under his direction in the movie “Pirates”, which was released in 1986, did not file a complaint, but gave a statement to the American police.

Nine years later, in December 2019, Roman Polanski called the allegations “hateful lies” in an interview with Paris Match.

“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 emphasizing the contradictions (of her),” said the director.

Roman Polanski referred to comments attributed to the actress in an interview published twenty years earlier, in 1999, by the British tabloid News of the World.

“I wanted to be his lover (…) I probably wanted him more than he wanted me,” she wrote in the article. An “inaccurate” quote, complained Charlotte Lewis in 2010.

After Roman Polanski’s interview in Paris Match, the actress filed a lawsuit for defamation, due to which the director was sent to court, where the essence of the accusations is considered at the hearing.

Roman Polanski’s lawyers deny any defamation in the statements made by their client in Paris Match: “Roman Polanski has the right to defend himself publicly, as does the woman who accuses him,” Delphine Meillet, who is defending him alongside Alain Jakubovich, told AFP.

They called Stuart White, the author of the News of the World article about Charlotte Lewis, as a witness.

“Defamation, defamation is an integral part of Polanski’s system and it is something that Charlotte Lewis condemns with great courage,” her lawyer Benjamin Shuai told AFP.

Roman Polanski, who the Americans consider a fugitive, is “hiding” in Europe

Born in Paris in 1933, Roman Polanski lives in Europe, protected from American justice, which considered him a fugitive for more than 40 years after being convicted of illicit sex with a minor.

In 2020, he won the best director award at the César gala for The Dreyfus Affair Allegations, even though he had just been accused of rape again, prompting actress Adele Guenel to walk out of the ceremony.

This incident became one of the symbols of the fight against sexual violence in the film industry.

Since then, Roman Polanski has been extremely reserved.

He shot The Palace in Switzerland, which was screened at the Venice Film Festival last September in his absence, but has not yet been released.

A far cry from his big films like The Pianist or Rosemary’s Baby, this comedy was coldly received at press screenings.

His defamation lawsuit comes at a time when the world of cinema has been rocked by the Judith Godrech case, in which directors Benoit Jacquot and Jacques Douillon were accused of raping a minor. At the César Awards in late February, unlike the 2020 awards, which honored Polanski, the actress condemned the use of film as a “cover for the illegal trafficking of young girls.”