The director pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse in a deal with prosecutors that saw them drop charges of rape, drugging and sodomy, which could have carried a life sentence, but fled the country in February 1978 when it became apparent that he was likely to serve time in prison.
Polanski's arrest is the latest twist in an extraordinary life that has been marked by violence, tragedy and controversy. His family returned to Poland shortly before the outbreak of the second world war and were forced into the Krakow ghetto with thousands of other Jewish families. The young Polanski escaped from the ghetto in 1943, but his parents were shipped to concentration camps, and his mother was murdered in Auschwitz.
Polanski married American actor Sharon Tate in 1968, but the following year, when eight months pregnant with his baby, she and four other people were brutally murdered by members of Charles Manson's "family".
In recent months, lawyers for Polanski have been seeking through the US courts to have the rape charges against him dropped, after new evidence emerged in a documentary that, they argued, showed he was a victim of "judicial misconduct" at his original trial. The film showed a former Los Angeles deputy district attorney admitting discussing the case with the trial judge while it was ongoing.
In February a Los Angeles judge agreed that "substantial … misconduct" had taken place during the original court proceedings, but said he could not drop the charges so long as Polanski remained a fugitive. Polanski has since appealed against the ruling, insisting he would not voluntarily return to the US even to clear his name.
