title: Pierce Brosnan

text: In 2007, Brosnan appeared in the film "Seraphim Falls" alongside fellow Irishman Liam Neeson. The film was released for limited screenings on 26 January 2007 to average reviews. Kevin Crust of the "Los Angeles Times" noted that Brosnan and Neeson made "fine adversaries"; Michael Rechtshaffen of "The Hollywood Reporter" thought that they were "hard-pressed to inject some much-needed vitality into their sparse lines." During the same year, Brosnan spoke of making a western with fellow Irish actors Gabriel Byrne and Colm Meaney. In that same year Brosnan starred as Tom Ryan in "Butterfly on a Wheel". The film was released in the United States under the name of "Shattered" and in Europe as "Desperate Hours".


title: Pierce Brosnan

text: In 2008, Brosnan joined Meryl Streep in the film adaptation of the ABBA musical "Mamma Mia!". He played Sam Carmichael, one of three men believed to be the father of Sophie (Amanda Seyfried), while Streep played Sophie's mother. Judy Craymer, producer of the film, said "Pierce brings a certain smooch factor, and we think he'll have great chemistry with Meryl in a romantic comedy." Brosnan's preparation in singing for the role included walking up and down the coast and singing karaoke to his own voice for about six weeks, followed by rehearsals in New York, which he noted "sounded dreadful." Brosnan's singing in the film was generally disparaged by critics, with his singing compared in separate reviews to the sound of a water buffalo, a donkey, and a wounded raccoon. In September 2008, Brosnan provided the narration for the "Thomas & Friends" movie "The Great Discovery". He was originally set to narrate for both US and UK from Series 12 to Series 14, but withdrew from it for unknown reasons.


title: Pierce Brosnan

text: In 2009, Brosnan finished the well-received "The Ghost Writer", playing a disgraced British Prime Minister, directed and produced by Roman Polanski. The film won a Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. He starred as Charles Hawkins in the film "Remember Me" and as Chiron in "", both released in 2010. In 2012, Brosnan played the role of Philip in the Danish romantic comedy "Love Is All You Need".


title: Pierce Brosnan

text: In February 2013, Brosnan was awarded honorary patronage of the Dublin University Players society at Trinity College, Dublin. He also starred opposite Owen Wilson in "No Escape", playing a "heroic government agent". Brosnan was slated to star in "Last Man Out", a crime film adapted from Stuart Neville's novel titled "The Twelve" (released as "Ghosts of Belfast" in the US) by Craig Ferguson and Ted Mulkerin, with director Terry Loan at the helm. However, it never came to fruition after years in development, and Brosnan is no longer attached to the production.


title: Pierce Brosnan

text: In 2013, Brosnan appeared in television commercials as a tongue in cheek version of himself to promote the launch of Sky Broadband in Ireland. In 2005, Brosnan was reported to be starring in "The November Man", an adaptation of Bill Granger's novel, "There Are No Spies". but the project was cancelled in 2007. After its cancellation, Brosnan's production company, "Irish DreamTime" resurrected "The November Man" in 2012 with an announcement made on his part that he was jumping back to the spy arena. Filming took place in Serbia a year later, with Brosnan in action as a retired CIA operative called Devereaux, alongside co-star Olga Kurylenko in a supporting role. The film was received negatively, with a 34% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 38/100 on Metacritic. In 2015, he appeared alongside Milla Jovovich in a suspense thriller movie written by Phil Shelby, called "Survivor", which began filming in January 2014, with Charles and Irwin Winkler producing, and James McTeigue directing. Brosnan later starred in a revenge thriller called "I.T.", which was released in September 2016, in a limited release and through video on demand.


title: Pierce Brosnan

text: Brosnan replaced actor Sam Neill in the role of Eli McCullough in a television adaptation of Philipp Meyer's novel "The Son", with Kevin Murphy serving as both executive producer and showrunner of the series, which began production in June 2016, and aired for two seasons from 2017 to 2019. In 2017, Brosnan starred in "The Foreigner", opposite Jackie Chan, as a former IRA man turned government official, Liam Hennessy. "The Foreigner" was filmed in London, and was directed by Martin Campbell, who previously worked with Brosnan on his debut James Bond film, "GoldenEye". It was noted that Brosnan's character bore a strong resemblance to Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams.


title: Pierce Brosnan

text: A third-time collaboration with director Martin Campbell would have seen Brosnan starring in a film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's 1950 novel "Across the River and into the Trees". However, the reluctance of investors to finance the production along with several delays led both Brosnan and Campbell to drop out of the project. Paula Ortiz was later brought on to direct the film and Liev Schreiber replaced Brosnan in the lead role.


title: Pierce Brosnan

text: In 2018, Brosnan co-starred with Guy Pearce and Minnie Driver in a mystery thriller film called "Spinning Man", based on George Harrar's novel of the same name. He later reprised his role as Sam Carmichael in the sequel to Catherine Johnson's "Mamma Mia!", entitled "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again", along with the rest of the cast members from the first film. He also had a supporting role in the action thriller headlined by Dave Bautista in "Final Score".


title: Pierce Brosnan

text: In 2021, Brosnan executive produced and starred in the heist caper entitled "The Misfits" directed by Renny Harlin from a screenplay by Robert Henry and Kurt Wimmer. The film was released to poor reception from critics. He also appeared in A24's horror film "False Positive" opposite Ilana Glazer, who co-wrote and co-produced it, as well. The film was a moderate success.


title: Pierce Brosnan

text: In March 2021, Brosnan was cast as Doctor Fate/Kent Nelson in the DC Extended Universe film, "Black Adam". In July 2021, he joined Adam Devine in the Netflix action-comedy film "The Out-Laws" directed by Tyler Spindel.


title: Pierce Brosnan

text: In 2022, Brosnan starred as King Louis XIV in the family adventure film "The King’s Daughter" based on the 1997 novel "The Moon and the Sun" by Vonda N. McIntyre. It was set to have a limited theatrical release in the U.S. and Canada on 21 January 2022.


title: Pierce Brosnan

text: Brosnan was touted to star opposite Jamie Dornan and Cillian Murphy in a film based on the events of The Maze Prison Escape, titled "H-Block" with Jim Sheridan at the helm. Initially, filming was to begin sometime in August 2017 before being postponed to March 2018 due to scheduling conflicts with cast members. As of today, preliminary production on the film is yet to commence.


title: Pierce Brosnan

text: Alongside Jesse Eisenberg and Vanessa Redgrave, Brosnan is set to appear in a historical period piece based on a novel by Jonathan Miles, entitled "The Wreck of The Medusa", set against the backdrop of the early 19th century during King Louis XVIII's reign in France, with the film to be directed by Peter Webber. During an interview in October 2020, Webber claimed that the lack of interest in "films about artists" in the market earned the project several setbacks, and as such still remains in development.


title: Pierce Brosnan

text: In July 2017, a rumour surfaced that Brosnan was linked to an upcoming video game entitled "Shadow Stalkers", a project led by ZOOM Platform. However, his role remains undisclosed as yet.


title: Pierce Brosnan

text: At "Star Wars" Celebration 2019 in Chicago, a mural was revealed showing an artist's rendering of Grand Admiral Thrawn with a strong resemblance to Brosnan, fuelling speculation about an upcoming role in the "Star Wars" franchise.


title: Pierce Brosnan

text: Shooting in spring 2022, Brosnan is set to lead the hitman thriller film "Fast Charlie" directed by Phillip Noyce.


title: Pierce Brosnan

text: Brosnan has been an Ambassador for UNICEF Ireland since 2001 and recorded a special announcement to mark the launch of UNICEF's "Unite for Children, Unite against AIDS" Campaign with Liam Neeson. Brosnan supported John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election and is a vocal supporter of same-sex marriage.


title: Pierce Brosnan

text: Brosnan first became aware of the nuclear arms race in 1962, at the age of nine, when worldwide condemnation of U.S. nuclear testing in Nevada made international headlines. During the 1990s, he participated in news conferences in Washington, D.C. to help Greenpeace draw attention to the campaign to bring an end to nuclear testing with a Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. Brosnan boycotted the French premiere of "GoldenEye" in support of Greenpeace's protest against the French nuclear testing program.


title: Pierce Brosnan

text: From 1997 to 2000, Brosnan and wife Smith worked with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) to stop a proposed salt factory from being built at Laguna San Ignacio. The couple with Halle Berry, Cindy Crawford and Daryl Hannah successfully fought the Cabrillo Port Liquefied Natural Gas facility that was proposed off the coast of Malibu; the State Lands Commission eventually denied the lease to build the terminal. In May 2007, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the facility.


title: Pierce Brosnan

text: In May 2007, Brosnan and Smith donated $100,000 to help replace a playground on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, where they own a house. On 7 July 2007, Brosnan presented a film at Live Earth in London; he also recorded a television advertisement for the cause.


title: Pierce Brosnan

text: Brosnan is also listed as a member of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society's Board of Advisors. In 2004, he was named 'Best-dressed Environmentalist' by the Sustainable Style Foundation.


title: Pierce Brosnan

text: Brosnan also raises money for charitable causes through sales of his paintings. After Brosnan left school, he pursued a career in art and began working as an illustrator. "I always wanted to be an artist, a painter. I started as a Trainee Artist in a small studio in South London." A colleague suggested that Pierce attend a theatre workshop, and eventually he abandoned his artwork to pursue a career in acting. Brosnan took up painting again in the late 1980s during his first wife's illness as he found it therapeutic. "Sometimes dramatic moments affect the way you see yourself in the world…from a very hard time in my life, I started painting again and out came every colour I could imagine." Citing his influences as Picasso, Matisse, Bonnard and Kandinsky, Brosnan spends much of his free time between film shoots in front of his easel. "I am self taught, an enthusiastic painter as a friend of mine likes to say." He has continued painting since then, using spare time on set and at home. Profits from sales of giclée prints of his works are given to a trust to benefit "environmental, children's and women's health charities." Since Harris' death, Brosnan has been an advocate for cancer awareness and, in 2006, he served as spokesperson for Lee National Denim Day, a breast cancer fundraiser which raises millions of dollars and raises more money in a single day than any other breast cancer fundraiser.


title: Pierce Brosnan

text: In 2021, Brosnan launched his first-ever NFT collection of digital artworks "Big Noise" - on a digital platform focusing on artist empowerment, sustainability and technical innovation - inspired by his painting "Earplugs" which he painted while filming the James Bond film "GoldenEye", incorporating abstract movement, self-recorded sound elements, including his voice, and bespoke visuals.


title: Pierce Brosnan

text: Brosnan has married twice, having been widowed once, and has five children and three grandchildren. He met Australian actress Cassandra Harris through her stepson David Harris, the nephew of Richard Harris, shortly after leaving drama school. On meeting her, he said, "What a beautiful looking woman. I never for an instant thought she was someone I'd spend 17 years of my life with. I didn't think of wooing her, or attempting to woo her; I just wanted to enjoy her beauty and who she was." They began dating and bought a house in Wimbledon. They married in December 1980 and had one son together, Sean, who was born on 13 September 1983 and later became an actor. They also lived with Harris' children, Charlotte (1971–2013) and Chris, and Brosnan adopted them after their father Dermot Harris died in 1986; they subsequently took on his surname. Early in their relationship, Brosnan worked in West End plays and television films. After Harris appeared in the James Bond film "For Your Eyes Only" in 1981, they secured a bank loan and moved to Southern California, where Brosnan was cast in the title role of the TV series "Remington Steele", easing their financial worries.


title: Pierce Brosnan

text: An episode of "Remington Steele" that was filmed in Ireland generated significant publicity. This led to Brosnan meeting his father, who had left when Brosnan was an infant, at his hotel. He expected to see a "very tall man" but instead described his father as "a man of medium stature, pushed-back silver hair, flinty eyes, and a twizzled jaw" who "had a very strong Kerry accent". He was regretful that they met under such public circumstances and wished for a more private arrangement.


title: Pierce Brosnan

text: While filming "The Deceivers" in Rajasthan in 1987, Harris became seriously ill. She was later diagnosed with ovarian cancer and died on 28 December 1991 at age 43. Brosnan struggled to cope with her death: "When your partner gets cancer, then life changes. Your timetable and reference for your normal routines and the way you view life, all this changes. Because you're dealing with death. You're dealing with the possibility of death and dying. And it was that way through the chemotherapy, through the first-look operation, the second look, the third look, the fourth look, the fifth look. Cassie was very positive about life. I mean, she had the most amazing energy and outlook on life. It was and is a terrible loss, and I see it reflected, from time to time, in my children." Harris had always wanted Brosnan to play James Bond; in 1995, four years after her death, Brosnan secured the role. His adopted daughter Charlotte also died of ovarian cancer, on 28 June 2013.


title: Pierce Brosnan

text: In 1994, Brosnan met American journalist Keely Shaye Smith in Mexico. They were married in 2001 at Ballintubber Abbey in Ireland. They have two sons together named Dylan and Paris. They reside primarily in Malibu, California, with a second American home in Hawaii and Irish residences in Dublin and County Meath. On 11 February 2015, the $18 million Malibu home caught fire and sustained $1 million in damages. During the 30 minutes it took firefighters to extinguish the fire, flames destroyed the contents of the garage, including Brosnan's 2002 Aston Martin V12 Vanquish, and spread to a bedroom above it; no injuries were sustained.


title: Pierce Brosnan

text: In July 2003, Queen Elizabeth II made Brosnan an honorary Officer of the Order of the British Empire for his "outstanding contribution to the British film industry". As an Irish citizen, he is ineligible to receive the full OBE honour, which is awarded only to a citizen of the Commonwealth realms, but he is still allowed the letters "OBE" after his name. In 2002, he was also awarded an honorary degree from the Dublin Institute of Technology and, a year later, the University College Cork. On 23 September 2004, he became an American citizen while retaining his Irish citizenship. He said, "My Irishness is in everything I do. It's the spirit of who I am, as a man, an actor, a father. It's where I come from." When asked by a fan if it annoyed him when people confused his nationality because of his fairly neutral accent, he said, "It amuses me in some respects that they should confuse me with an Englishman when I'm a dyed-in-the-wool, born and bred Irishman... I don't necessarily fly under any flag, but no, it doesn't bother me."


title: Pierce Brosnan

text: Brosnan has expressed contempt for his Christian Brothers education, but commented in 2013, "It always helps to have a bit of prayer in your back pocket. At the end of the day, you have to have something and for me that is God, Jesus, my Catholic upbringing, my faith... God has been good to me. My faith has been good to me in the moments of deepest suffering, doubt and fear. It is a constant, the language of prayer. I might not have got my sums right from the Christian Brothers or might not have got the greatest learning of literature from them, but I certainly got a strapping amount of faith." He attends Mass but also adheres to other spiritual beliefs, stating in 2008 that he loves "the teachings of Buddhist philosophy", which he referred to as his "own private faith". He elaborated, "I don't preach it, but it's a faith that is a comfort to me when the night is long."


title: Roman Polanski

text: Raymond Roman Thierry Polański (né Liebling; 18 August 1933) is a French-Polish film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. He is the recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, two British Academy Film Awards, nine César Awards, two Golden Globe Awards,


title: Roman Polanski

text: His Polish–Jewish parents moved the family from his birthplace in Paris back to Kraków in 1937. Two years later, the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany started World War II, and the family found themselves trapped in the Kraków Ghetto. After his mother and father were taken in raids, Polanski spent his formative years in foster homes, surviving the Holocaust by adopting a false identity and concealing his Jewish heritage. Polanski's first feature-length film, "Knife in the Water" (1962), was made in Poland and was nominated for the United States Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. After living in France for a few years, he moved to the United Kingdom, where he directed his first three English-language feature-length films: "Repulsion" (1965), "Cul-de-sac" (1966), and "The Fearless Vampire Killers" (1967). In 1968, he moved to the United States and cemented his status in the film industry by directing the horror film "Rosemary's Baby" (1968).


title: Roman Polanski

text: Polanski's life turned in 1969 when his pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate, and four friends were murdered by members of the Manson Family. He made "Macbeth" (1971) in England and "Chinatown" (1974) back in Hollywood. In 1977, Polanski was arrested and charged with drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl. As a result of a plea bargain, he pleaded guilty to the lesser offence of unlawful sex with a minor. In 1978, upon learning that the judge planned to reject his plea deal and impose a prison term instead of probation, he fled to Paris. As a result, Polanski is a fugitive from the U.S. criminal justice system. After fleeing to Europe, Polanski continued directing. His other critically acclaimed films include "Tess" (1979), "The Ghost Writer" (2010), "Venus in Fur" (2013), and "An Officer and a Spy" (2019).


title: Roman Polanski

text: Polanski was born in Paris. He was the son of Bula (aka "Bella") Katz-Przedborska and Mojżesz (or Maurycy) Liebling (later Polański), a painter and manufacturer of sculptures, who after World War II was known as Ryszard Polański. Polanski's father was Jewish and originally from Poland; Polanski's mother, born in Russia, had been raised Catholic but was half Jewish. His mother had a daughter, Annette, by her previous husband. Annette survived Auschwitz, where her mother was murdered, and left Poland forever for France. Polanski's parents were both agnostics. Polanski later stated that he was an atheist.


title: Roman Polanski

text: The Polański family moved back to Kraków, Poland, in early 1937, and were living there when World War II began with the invasion of Poland. Kraków was soon occupied by the German forces, and the racist and anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws made the Polańskis targets of persecution, forcing them into the Kraków Ghetto, along with thousands of the city's Jews. Around the age of six, Polanski attended primary school for only a few weeks, until "all the Jewish children were abruptly expelled", writes biographer Christopher Sandford. That initiative was soon followed by the requirement that all Jewish children over the age of twelve wear white armbands with a blue Star of David imprinted for visual identification. After he was expelled, Polanksi would not be allowed to enter another classroom for six years.


title: Roman Polanski

text: Polanski witnessed both the ghettoization of Kraków's Jews into a compact area of the city, and the subsequent deportation of all the ghetto's Jews to German death camps. He watched as his father was taken away. He remembers from age six, one of his first experiences of the terrors to follow:


title: Roman Polanski

text: Polanksi's father was transferred, along with thousands of other Jews, to Mauthausen, a group of 49 German concentration camps in Austria. His mother, who was four months pregnant at the time, was taken to Auschwitz and killed in the gas chamber soon after arriving. The forced exodus took place immediately after the German liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto, a real-life backdrop to Polanski's film "The Pianist" (2002). Polanski, who was then hiding from the Germans, saw his father being marched off with a long line of people. Polanski tried getting closer to his father to ask him what was happening and got within a few yards. His father saw him, but afraid his son might be spotted by the German soldiers, whispered (in Polish), "Get lost!"


title: Roman Polanski

text: Polanski escaped the Kraków Ghetto in 1943 and survived with the help of some Polish Roman Catholics, including a woman who had promised Polanski's father that she would shelter the boy. Polanski attended church, learned to recite Catholic prayers by heart, and behaved outwardly as a Roman Catholic, although he was never baptized. His efforts to blend into a Catholic household failed miserably at least once, when the parish priest visiting the family posed questions to him one-on-one about the catechism, and ultimately said, "You aren't one of us". The punishment for helping a Jew in German-occupied Poland was death.


title: Roman Polanski

text: As Polanski roamed the countryside trying to survive in a Poland now occupied by German troops, he witnessed many horrors, such as being "forced to take part in a cruel and sadistic game in which German soldiers took shots at him for target practice". The author Ian Freer concludes that Polanski's constant childhood fears and dread of violence have contributed to the "tangible atmospheres he conjures up on film". By the time the war ended in 1945, a fifth of the Polish population had been killed, the vast majority being civilians. Of those deaths, 3 million were Polish Jews, which accounted for 90% of the country's Jewish population. According to Sandford, Polanski would use the memory of his mother, her dress and makeup style, as a physical model for Faye Dunaway's character in his film "Chinatown" (1974).


title: Roman Polanski

text: After the war, Polanksi was reunited with his father and moved back to Kraków. His father remarried on 21 December 1946 to Wanda Zajączkowska (whom Polanski had never liked) and died of cancer in 1984. Time repaired the family contacts; Polanski visited them in Kraków, and relatives visited him in Hollywood and Paris. Polanski recalls the villages and families he lived with as relatively primitive by European standards:


title: Roman Polanski

text: Polanski stated that "you must live in a Communist country to really understand how bad it can be. Then you will appreciate capitalism." He also remembered events at the war's end and his reintroduction to mainstream society when he was 12, forming friendships with other children, such as Roma Ligocka, Ryszard Horowitz and his family.


title: Roman Polanski

text: Polanski's fascination with cinema began very early when he was around age four or five. He recalls this period in an interview:


title: Roman Polanski

text: After the war, he watched films, either at school or at a local cinema, using whatever pocket money he had. Polanski writes, "Most of this went on the movies, but movie seats were dirt cheap, so a little went a long way. I lapped up every kind of film." As time went on, movies became more than an escape into entertainment, as he explains:


title: Roman Polanski

text: Polanski attended the National Film School in Łódź, the third-largest city in Poland. In the 1950s, Polanski took up acting, appearing in Andrzej Wajda's "Pokolenie" ("A Generation", 1954) and in the same year in Silik Sternfeld's "Zaczarowany rower" ("Enchanted Bicycle" or "Magical Bicycle"). Polanski's directorial debut was also in 1955 with a short film "Rower" ("Bicycle"). "Rower" is a semi-autobiographical feature film, believed to be lost, which also starred Polanski. It refers to his real-life violent altercation with a notorious Kraków felon, Janusz Dziuba, who arranged to sell Polanski a bicycle, but instead beat him badly and stole his money. In real life, the offender was arrested while fleeing after fracturing Polanski's skull, and executed for three murders, out of eight prior such assaults which he had committed. Several other short films made during his study at Łódź gained him considerable recognition, particularly "Two Men and a Wardrobe" (1958) and "When Angels Fall" (1959). He graduated in 1959.


title: Roman Polanski

text: Polanski's first feature-length film, "Knife in the Water", was also one of the first significant Polish films after the Second World War that did not have a war theme. Scripted by Jerzy Skolimowski, Jakub Goldberg, and Polanski, "Knife in the Water" is about a wealthy, unhappily married couple who decide to take a mysterious hitchhiker with them on a weekend boating excursion. "Knife in the Water" was a major commercial success in the West and gave Polanski an international reputation. The film also earned its director his first Academy Award nomination (Best Foreign Language Film) in 1963. Leon Niemczyk, who played Andrzej, was the only professional actor in the film. Jolanta Umecka, who played Krystyna, was discovered by Polanski at a swimming pool.


title: Roman Polanski

text: Polanski left then-communist Poland and moved to France, where he had already made two notable short films in 1961: "The Fat and the Lean" and "Mammals". While in France, Polanski contributed one segment ("La rivière de diamants") to the French-produced omnibus film, "Les plus belles escroqueries du monde" (English title: "The Beautiful Swindlers") in 1964. (He has since had the segment removed from all releases of the film.) However, Polanski found that in the early 1960s, the French film industry was xenophobic and generally unwilling to support a rising filmmaker of foreign origin.


title: Roman Polanski

text: Polanski made three feature films in England, based on original scripts written by himself and Gérard Brach, a frequent collaborator. "Repulsion" (1965) is a psychological horror film focusing on a young Belgian woman named Carol (Catherine Deneuve).


title: Roman Polanski

text: The film's themes, situations, visual motifs, and effects clearly reflect the influence of early surrealist cinema as well as horror movies of the 1950s—particularly Luis Buñuel's "Un chien Andalou", Jean Cocteau's "The Blood of a Poet", Henri-Georges Clouzot's "Diabolique" and Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho".


title: Roman Polanski

text: "Cul-de-sac" (1966) is a bleak nihilist tragicomedy filmed on location in Northumberland. The tone and premise of the film owe a great deal to Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot", along with aspects of Harold Pinter's "The Birthday Party".


title: Roman Polanski

text: "The Fearless Vampire Killers" (1967) (known by its original title, "Dance of the Vampires" in most countries outside the United States) is a parody of vampire films. The plot concerns a buffoonish professor and his clumsy assistant, Alfred (played by Polanski), who are traveling through Transylvania in search of vampires. "The Fearless Vampire Killers" was Polanski's first feature to be photographed in color with the use of Panavision lenses, and included a striking visual style with snow-covered, fairy-tale landscapes, similar to the work of Soviet fantasy filmmakers. In addition, the richly textured color schemes of the settings evoke the paintings of the Belarusian-Jewish artist Marc Chagall, who provides the namesake for the innkeeper in the film. The film was written for Jack MacGowran, who played the lead role of Professor Abronsius.


title: Roman Polanski

text: Polanski met Sharon Tate while making the film; she played the role of the local innkeeper's daughter. They were married in London on 1968. Shortly after they married, Polanski, with Tate at his side during a documentary film, described the demands of young movie viewers who he said always wanted to see something "new" and "different".


title: Roman Polanski

text: Paramount studio head Robert Evans brought Polanski to America ostensibly to direct the film "Downhill Racer", but told Polanski that he really wanted him to read the horror novel "Rosemary's Baby" by Ira Levin to see if a film could be made out of it. Polanski read it non-stop through the night and the following morning decided he wanted to write as well as direct it. He wrote the 272-page screenplay in slightly longer than three weeks. The film, "Rosemary's Baby" (1968), was a box-office success and became his first Hollywood production, thereby establishing his reputation as a major commercial filmmaker. The film, a horror-thriller set in trendy Manhattan, is about Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow), a young housewife who is impregnated by the devil. Polanski's screenplay adaptation earned him a second Academy Award nomination.


title: Roman Polanski

text: On 9 August 1969, while Polanski was working in London, his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, and four other people were murdered at the Polanskis' residence in Los Angeles by cult leader Charles Manson's followers.


title: Roman Polanski

text: Polanski adapted "Macbeth" into a screenplay with the Shakespeare expert Kenneth Tynan. Jon Finch and Francesca Annis played the main characters. Hugh Hefner and Playboy Productions funded the 1971 film, which opened in New York and was screened in Playboy Theater. Hefner was credited as executive producer, and the film was listed as a "Playboy Production". It was controversial because of Lady Macbeth's being nude in a scene, and received an X rating because of its graphic violence and nudity. In his autobiography, Polanski wrote that he wanted to be true to the violent nature of the work and that he had been aware that his first project following Tate's murder would be subject to scrutiny and probable criticism regardless of the subject matter; if he had made a comedy he would have been perceived as callous.


title: Roman Polanski

text: Written by Polanski and previous collaborator Gérard Brach, "What?" (1973) is a mordant absurdist comedy loosely based on the themes of "Alice in Wonderland" and Henry James. The film is a rambling shaggy dog story about the sexual indignities that befall a winsome young American hippie woman hitchhiking through Europe.


title: Roman Polanski

text: Polanski returned to Hollywood in 1973 to direct "Chinatown" (1974) for Paramount Pictures. The film is widely considered to be one of the finest American mystery crime movies, inspired by the real-life California Water Wars, a series of disputes over southern California water at the beginning of the 20th century.


title: Roman Polanski

text: It was nominated for 11 Academy Awards, including those for actors Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. Robert Towne won for Best Original Screenplay. It also had actor-director John Huston in a supporting role, and was the last film Polanski directed in the United States. In 1991, the film was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" and it is frequently listed as among the best in world cinema.


title: Roman Polanski

text: Polanski returned to Paris for his next film, "The Tenant" (1976), which was based on a 1964 novel by Roland Topor, a French writer of Polish-Jewish origin. In addition to directing the film, Polanski also played a leading role of a timid Polish immigrant living in Paris. Together with "Repulsion" and "Rosemary's Baby", "The Tenant" can be seen as the third installment in a loose trilogy of films called the "Apartment Trilogy" that explores the themes of social alienation and psychic and emotional breakdown.


title: Roman Polanski

text: In 1978, Polanski became a fugitive from American justice and could no longer work in countries where he might face arrest or extradition.


title: Roman Polanski

text: He dedicated his next film, "Tess" (1979), to the memory of his late wife, Sharon Tate. It was Tate who first suggested he read "Tess of the d'Urbervilles", which she thought would make a good film; he subsequently expected her to star in it. Nearly a decade after Tate's death, he met Nastassja Kinski, a model and aspiring young actress who had already been in a number of European films. He offered her the starring role, which she accepted. Her father was Klaus Kinski, a leading German actor, who had introduced her to films.


title: Roman Polanski

text: Because the role required having a local dialect, Polanski sent her to London for five months of study and to spend time in the Dorset countryside to get a flavor of the region. In the film, Kinski starred opposite Peter Firth and Leigh Lawson.


title: Roman Polanski

text: "Tess" was shot in the north of France instead of Hardy's England and became the most expensive film made in France up to that time. Ultimately, it proved a financial success and was well received by both critics and the public. Polanski won France's César Awards for Best Picture and Best Director and received his fourth Academy Award nomination (and his second nomination for Best Director). The film received three Oscars: best cinematography, best art direction, best costume design, and was nominated for best picture.


title: Roman Polanski

text: At the time, there were rumors that Polanski and Kinski became romantically involved, which he confirmed in a 1994 interview with Diane Sawyer, but she says the rumors are untrue; they were never lovers or had an affair. She admits that "there was a flirtation. There "could" have been a seduction, but there was not. He had respect for me." She also recalls his influence on her while filming: "He was really a gentleman, not at all like the things I had heard. He introduced me to beautiful books, plays, movies. He educated me." On an emotional level, she said years later that "he was one of the people in my life who cared, ... who took me seriously and gave me a lot of strength." She told David Letterman more about her experience working with Polanski during an interview.


title: Roman Polanski

text: In 1981, Polanski directed and co-starred (as Mozart) in a stage production of Peter Shaffer's play "Amadeus", first in Warsaw, then in Paris. The play was again directed by Polanski, in Milan, in 1999.


title: Roman Polanski

text: Nearly seven years passed before Polanski's next film, "Pirates", a lavish period piece starring Walter Matthau as Captain Red, which the director intended as an homage to the beloved Errol Flynn swashbucklers of his childhood. Captain Red's henchman, Jean Baptiste, was played by Cris Campion. The film is about a rebellion the two led on a ship called the "Neptune", in the seventeenth century. The screenplay was written by Polanski, Gérard Brach, and John Brownjohn. The film was shot on location in Tunisia, using a full-sized pirate vessel constructed for the production. It was a financial and critical failure, recovering a small fraction of its production budget and garnering a single Academy Award nomination.


title: Roman Polanski

text: "Frantic" (1988) was a Hitchcockian suspense-thriller starring Harrison Ford and the actress/model Emmanuelle Seigner, who later became Polanski's wife. The film follows an ordinary tourist in Paris whose wife is kidnapped. He attempts, hopelessly, to go through the Byzantine bureaucratic channels to deal with her disappearance, but finally takes matters into his own hands.


title: Roman Polanski

text: In 1997, Polanski directed a stage version of his 1967 film "The Fearless Vampire Killers", which debuted in Vienna followed by successful runs in Stuttgart, Hamburg, Berlin, and Budapest.


title: Roman Polanski

text: "The Ninth Gate" is a thriller based on the novel "El Club Dumas" by Arturo Perez-Reverte and starring Johnny Depp. The movie's plot is based on the idea that an ancient text called "The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows", authored by Aristide Torchia along with Lucifer, is the key to raising Satan.


title: Roman Polanski

text: In 2001, Polanski filmed "The Pianist", an adaptation of the World War II autobiography of the same name by Polish-Jewish musician Władysław Szpilman. Szpilman's experiences as a persecuted Jew in Poland during World War II were reminiscent of those of Polanski and his family. While Szpilman and Polanski escaped the concentration camps, their families did not, eventually perishing.


title: Roman Polanski

text: When Warsaw, Poland, was chosen for the 2002 premiere of "The Pianist", "the country exploded with pride." According to reports, numerous former communists came to the screening and "agreed that it was a fantastic film."


title: Roman Polanski

text: In May 2002, the film won the "Palme d'Or" (Golden Palm) award at the Cannes Film Festival, as well as Césars for Best Film and Best Director, and later the 2002 Academy Award for Best Director. Because Polanski would have been arrested in the United States, he did not attend the Academy Awards ceremony in Hollywood. After the announcement of the Best Director Award, Polanski received a standing ovation from most of those present in the theater. Actor Harrison Ford accepted the award for Polanski and then presented the Oscar to him at the Deauville Film Festival five months later in a public ceremony. Polanski later received the Crystal Globe award for outstanding artistic contribution to world cinema at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 2004.


title: Roman Polanski

text: "Oliver Twist" is an adaptation of Charles Dickens' novel, written by "The Pianist"s Ronald Harwood and shot in Prague. Polanski said in interviews that he made the film as something he could show his children and that the life of the young scavenger mirrored his own life, fending for himself in World War II Poland.


title: Roman Polanski

text: "The Ghost Writer", a thriller focusing on a ghostwriter working on the memoirs of a character based loosely on former British prime minister Tony Blair, swept the European Film Awards in 2010, winning six awards, including best movie, director, actor and screenplay. When it premiered at the 60th Berlinale in February 2010, Polanski won a Silver Bear for Best Director, and in February 2011, it won four César Awards, France's version of the Academy Awards.


title: Roman Polanski

text: The film is based on a novel by British writer Robert Harris. Harris and Polanski had previously worked for many months on a film of Harris's earlier novel "Pompeii", a novel that was actually inspired by Polanski's "Chinatown". They had completed a script for "Pompeii" and were nearing production when the film was cancelled due to a looming actors' strike in September 2007. After that film fell apart, they moved on to Harris's novel, The Ghost, and adapted it for the screen together.


title: Roman Polanski

text: The cast includes Ewan McGregor as the writer and Pierce Brosnan as former British Prime Minister Adam Lang. The film was shot on locations in Germany.


title: Roman Polanski

text: In the United States, film critic Roger Ebert included it in his top 10 picks for 2010 and states that "this movie is the work of a man who knows how to direct a thriller. Smooth, calm, confident, it builds suspense instead of depending on shock and action." Co-star Ewan McGregor agreed, having said about Polanski that "he's a legend ... I've never examined a director and the way that they work so much before. He's brilliant, just brilliant, and absolutely warrants his reputation as a great director."


title: Roman Polanski

text: Polanski shot "Carnage" in February/March 2011. The film is a screen version of Yasmina Reza's play "God of Carnage", a comedy about two couples who meet after their children get in a fight at school, and how their initially civilized conversation devolves into chaos. It stars Kate Winslet, Jodie Foster, Christoph Waltz and John C. Reilly. Though set in New York, it was shot in Paris. The film had its world premiere on 9 September 2011 at the Venice Film Festival and was released in the United States by Sony Pictures Classics on 16 December 2011.


title: Roman Polanski

text: Co-stars Jodie Foster and Kate Winslet commented about Polanski's directing style. According to Foster, "He has a very, very definitive style about how he likes it done. He decides everything. He decided every lens. Every prop. Everything. It's all him." Winslet adds that "Roman is one of the most extraordinary men I've ever met. The guy is 77 years old. He has an effervescent quality to him. He's very joyful about his work, which is infectious. He likes to have a small crew, to the point that, when I walked on the set, my thought was, 'My God, this is it?'" Also noting that style of directing, New York Film Festival director Richard Pena, during the American premiere of the film, called Polanski "a poet of small spaces ... in just a couple of rooms he can conjure up an entire world, an entire society."


title: Roman Polanski

text: Polanski's French-language adaptation of the award-winning play "Venus in Fur", stars his wife Emmanuelle Seigner and Mathieu Amalric. Polanski worked with the play's author, David Ives, on the screenplay. The film was shot from December 2012 to February 2013 in French and is Polanski's first non-English-language feature film in forty years. The film premiered in competition at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival on 25 May 2013.


title: Roman Polanski

text: Polanski's "Based on a True Story" is an adaptation of the French novel by bestselling author Delphine de Vignan. The film follows a writer (Emmanuelle Seigner) struggling to complete a new novel, while followed by an obsessed fan (Eva Green). It started production in November 2016 from a script adapted by Polanski and Olivier Assayas. It premiered out of competition at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival on 27 May 2017 and opened in France on 1 November 2017.


title: Roman Polanski

text: Polanski's 2019 film "An Officer and a Spy", centers on the notorious 19th century Dreyfus affair, The film stars Jean Dujardin as French officer Georges Picquart and follows his struggle from 1896–1906 to expose the truth about the doctored evidence that led to Alfred Dreyfus, one of the few Jewish members of the French Army's general staff, being wrongly convicted of passing military secrets to the German Empire and sent to Devil's Island. The film is written by Robert Harris, who is working with Polanski for the third time. It co-stars Louis Garrel as Dreyfus, Mathieu Amalric, Olivier Gourmet and Polanski's wife Emmanuelle Seigner. It is being produced by Alain Goldman's Legende Films and distributed by Gaumont. Filming began on 26 November 2018 and was completed on 28 April 2019.


title: Roman Polanski

text: Although set in Paris, the film was first scheduled to shoot in Warsaw in 2014, for economic reasons. However, production was postponed after Polanski moved to Poland for filming and the U.S. Government filed extradition papers. The Polish government eventually rejected them, by which time new French film tax credits had been introduced, allowing the film to shoot on location in Paris. It was budgeted at €60m and was again set to start production in July 2016, however its production was postponed as Polanski waited on the availability of a star, whose name was not announced. In a 2017 interview Polanski discussed the difficulty of the project:


title: Roman Polanski

text: It had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on 30 August 2019. It received a standing ovation and won the Grand Jury Prize. It was released in France on 13 November 2019, by Gaumont. The film has received backlash due to the plot of the film relating to Polanski's sexual abuse case and further accusations of harassment and assault.


title: Roman Polanski

text: In February 2020, Polanski won Best Director at France's 2020 Cesar Awards. Neither Polanski nor the cast and crew of "An Officer and a Spy" ("J'accuse") attended the awards ceremony hosted at the Salle Pleyel in Paris. Polanski said that he will not submit himself to a "public lynching" over rape accusations he denies. Addressing the accusations of sexual assault leveled at him, he said, "Fantasies of unhealthy minds are now treated as proven facts." This is Polanski's fifth Best Director Cesar win, the record for a single director; he previously won for "Tess", "The Pianist", "The Ghost Writer", and "Venus in Fur".


title: Roman Polanski

text: Prior to the awards ceremony, Polanski released a statement, saying, "For several days, people have asked me this question: Will I or won't I attend the Cesar ceremony? The question I ask in turn is this: How could I?. [...] The way the night will unfold, we already know in advance," he continued. "Activists have already threatened me with a public lynching, some have announced protests in front of the Salle Pleyel. Others intend to make it a platform to denounce (the) governing body. It promises to look more like a symposium than a celebration of cinema." Polanski said he was skipping the ceremony in order to protect his team as well as his wife and children, who "have been made to suffer injuries and affronts." Making reference to the recent media scandal that led to the Cesar board's mass resignation, Polanski added: "The press and social media have presented our 12 nominations as if they were gifts offered to us by the academy's board of directors, as some authoritarian gesture that had forced their resignations. Doing so undermines the secret vote of the 4,313 professionals who alone decide the nominations and the more than 1.5 million viewers who came to see the film."


title: Roman Polanski

text: Despite Polanski's absence from the awards ceremony, his nomination and win sparked protests due to the rape charges that he still faces. The protestors held up signs with slogans like "Shame on an industry that protects rapists." Police clashed with protestors, even firing tear gas upon them. Actions were also taken by celebrities, such as Adèle Haenel, Noémie Merlant, and Celine Sciamma who walked out of the awards. Many other celebrities and feminists spoke out against Polanski online, such as NousToutes, a French feminist collective, who called the win "shameful", and Jessica Chastain tweeted, "I Fucking Stan" in regard to the protests. At the same time some celebrities came to his defense, like actress Fanny Ardant, who said, "When I love someone, I love them passionately. And I love Roman Polanski a lot... a lot... So I'm very happy for him. Then, I understand that not everyone agrees but long live freedom!" and actress Brigitte Bardot who said, "Thankfully Polanski exists and he is saving cinema from its mediocrity! I judge him on his talent and not on his private life! I regret never having shot with him!". The actor Lambert Wilson called the protest campaign against Polanski "abominable public lynching", as did Isabelle Huppert, who stated that "lynching is a form of pornography". Likewise, Polanski's alleged victim Samantha Geimer criticized the protesters as "very opportunistic", and said that "If you want to change the world today, you do it by... demanding people be held accountable today, not by picking someone who is famous and thinking that if you demonise him for things that happened decades ago that somehow that has any value in protecting people and changing society".


title: Roman Polanski

text: In an interview to promote the film, Polanski admitted: "I am familiar with many of the workings of the apparatus of persecution shown in the film... I can see the same determination to deny the facts and condemn me for things I have not done. Most of the people who harass me do not know me and know nothing about the case."


title: Roman Polanski

text: In October 2020, Polanski went back to Poland and paid respects to a Polish couple who helped him hide and escape the Nazis. Stefania and Jan Buchala were recognized by Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial, as "Righteous Among the Nations". Polanski recalled Stefania Buchala as being an "extremely noble" and courageous person.


title: Roman Polanski

text: Polanski's next film, "The Palace", began filming in February 2022 in Gstaad, Switzerland. The film stars Mickey Rourke, Fanny Ardant, and Oliver Masucci, and is a black comedy about the guests at a Swiss luxury hotel on New Year's Eve 1999. Polanski co-wrote the screenplay with fellow Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski, who also co-wrote Polanski's first feature, "Knife in the Water", in 1962. RAI Cinema and Eliseo Entertainment produced the film. The film will be released theatrically in Italy by 01 Distribution on January 12, 2023.


title: Roman Polanski

text: In 1959, Polanski married actress Barbara Kwiatkowska-Lass. She starred in his short film "When Angels Fall". The couple divorced in 1961.


title: Roman Polanski

text: Polanski met actress Sharon Tate while filming "The Fearless Vampire Killers", and during the production, the two of them began dating. On 1968, Polanski and Tate married in London.


title: Roman Polanski

text: In February 1969 Polanski and Tate began renting the home at 10050 Cielo Drive in the Benedict Canyon region of Los Angeles. In August, while Polanski was in Europe working on a film, Tate remained home, eight-and-a-half months pregnant. The Manson Family cult broke into the home late in the evening of August 8 and proceeded to murder Tate and four others. Tate's unborn child was posthumously named Paul Richard Polanski. Charles Manson, along with members of the cult, was arrested in late 1969, eventually tried, and found guilty in 1971 of first-degree murder.


title: Roman Polanski

text: Polanski has said that his absence on the night of the murders is the greatest regret of his life. He wrote in his autobiography: "Sharon's death is the only watershed in my life that really matters", and commented that her murder changed his personality from a "boundless, untroubled sea of expectations and optimism" to one of "ingrained pessimism ... eternal dissatisfaction with life". Polanski was left with a negative impression of the press, which he felt was interested in sensationalizing the lives of the victims, and indirectly himself, to attract readers. He was shocked by the lack of sympathy expressed in various news stories:


title: Roman Polanski

text: In 1989, Polanski married actress Emmanuelle Seigner. They have two children, daughter Morgane and son Elvis. Polanski and his children speak Polish at home.


title: Roman Polanski

text: In May 2018, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted to expel Polanski from its membership. The same year, his wife Emmanuelle Seigner rejected the invitation to join the Academy, denouncing the "hypocrisy" of a group that expelled Polanski.


title: Roman Polanski

text: In 1977, Polanski was arrested and charged with drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl. As a result of a plea bargain, he pleaded guilty to the lesser offence of unlawful sex with a minor. In 1978, after learning that the judge planned to reject his plea deal and impose a prison term instead of probation, he fled to Paris. A number of other women have later accused Polanski of raping them when they were teenagers. An Interpol red notice was issued for his arrest, and he rarely leaves France.


title: Roman Polanski

text: On 11 March 1977, three years after making "Chinatown", Polanski was arrested at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel for the sexual assault of 13-year-old Samantha Gailey. Gailey had modeled for Polanski during a "Vogue" photoshoot the previous day around the swimming pool at the Bel Air home of Polanski was indicted on six counts of criminal behavior, including rape. At his arraignment, he pleaded not guilty to all charges. Many executives in Hollywood came to his defense. Gailey's attorney arranged a plea bargain in which five of the six charges would be dismissed, and Polanski accepted.


title: Roman Polanski

text: As a result of the plea bargain, Polanski pleaded guilty to the charge of "unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor", and was ordered to undergo 90 days of psychiatric evaluation at California Institution for Men at Chino. Upon release from prison after 42 days, Polanski agreed to the plea bargain, his penalty to be time served (the time he had already served in jail) along with probation. However, he learned afterward that the judge, Laurence J. Rittenband, had told some friends that he was going to disregard the plea bargain and sentence Polanski to 50 years in prison: "I'll see this man never gets out of jail," he told Polanski's friend, screenwriter Howard E. Koch. Gailey's attorney confirmed the judge changed his mind after he met the judge in his chambers:


title: Roman Polanski

text: Polanski was told by his attorney that "the judge could no longer be trusted" and that the judge's representations were "worthless". Polanski decided not to appear at his sentencing. He told his friend, producer Dino De Laurentiis, "I've made up my mind. I'm getting out of here." the day before sentencing, Polanski left the country on a flight to where he had a home. One day later, he left for As a French citizen, he has been protected from extradition and has lived mostly in France since then. Since he fled the United States before final sentencing, the charges are still pending.


title: Roman Polanski

text: In 1988, Gailey sued Polanski. Among other things, the suit alleged sexual assault, false imprisonment, seduction of a minor, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. In 1993, Polanski agreed to settle with his victim. In August 1996, Polanski still owed her $604,416; court filings confirm that the settlement was completed by 1997 via a confidential financial arrangement. The victim, now married and going by the name Samantha Geimer, stated in a 2003 interview with Larry King that the police and media had been slow at the time of the assault to believe her account, which she attributed to the social climate of the era. In 2008, she stated, "I don't wish for him to be held to further punishment or consequences."


title: Roman Polanski

text: On 26 September 2009, Polanski was arrested while in Switzerland at the request of United States authorities. The arrest brought renewed attention to the case and stirred controversy, particularly in the United States and Europe. Polanski was defended by many prominent individuals, including Hollywood celebrities and European artists and politicians, who called for his release. American public opinion was reported to run against him, and polls in France and Poland showed that strong majorities favored his extradition to the United States.


title: Roman Polanski

text: Polanski was jailed near Zürich for two months, then put under house arrest at his home in Gstaad while awaiting the results of his extradition appeals. On 12 July 2010, the Swiss rejected the United States' request, declared Polanski a "free man" and released him from custody. An Interpol red notice was issued in 1978 after he fled the United States, limiting his movements to France, Switzerland, and Poland. His name is no longer found on Interpol's wanted list.


title: Roman Polanski

text: During a television interview on 10 March 2011, Geimer blamed the media, reporters, the court, and the judge for having caused "way more damage to me and my family than anything Roman Polanski has ever done", and opined that the judge was using her and Polanski for the media exposure.


title: Roman Polanski

text: In January 2014, newly uncovered emails from 2008 by a Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge, Larry P. Fidler, indicated that if Polanski returned to the United States for a hearing, the conduct of the judge who had originally presided over the case, Laurence A. Rittenband, might require that Polanski be freed. These emails were related to a 2008 documentary film by Marina Zenovich. In late October 2014, Polanski was questioned by prosecutors in Kraków.


title: Roman Polanski

text: On 30 October 2015, Polish judge Dariusz Mazur denied a request by the United States to extradite Polanski (a dual French-Polish citizen) for a full trial, claiming that it would be "obviously unlawful". The Kraków prosecutor's office declined to challenge the court's ruling, agreeing that Polanski had served his punishment and did not need to face a U.S. court again. Poland's national justice ministry took up the appeal, arguing that sexual abuse of minors should be prosecuted regardless of the suspect's accomplishments or the length of time since the suspected crime took place. In a December 2016 decision, the Supreme Court of Poland dismissed the government's appeal, holding that the prosecutor general had failed to prove misconduct or flagrant legal error on the part of the lower court.


title: Roman Polanski

text: On 3 May 2018, Polanski was removed from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, with the decision referencing the case.


title: Roman Polanski

text: Polanski has blamed Harvey Weinstein for the renewed focus on his sexual abuse case in the 2000s and claimed that Weinstein tried to brand him a "child rapist" to stop him from winning an Oscar in 2003.


title: Roman Polanski

text: In 2008, the documentary film by Marina Zenovich, "", was released in Europe and the United States where it won numerous awards. The film focuses on the judge in the case and the possible reasons why he changed his mind. It includes interviews with people involved in the case, including the victim, Geimer, and the prosecutor, Roger Gunson. Geimer said that the judge "didn't care what happened" to her or Polanski, but "was orchestrating some little show", while Gunson added, "I'm not surprised that Polanski left under those circumstances, ... it was going to be a real circus."


title: Roman Polanski

text: Former Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney David Wells, whose statements were the most damning against Polanski, and who said he advised the judge to imprison Polanski, admitted that he lied about those statements, and said that to the press to "play up" his own role.


title: Roman Polanski

text: In December 2009, a California appellate court discussed the film's allegations as it denied Polanski's request to have the case dismissed. While saying it was "deeply concerned" by the allegations, and that the allegations were "in many cases supported by considerable evidence", it also found that "Even in light of our fundamental concern about the misconduct ... flight was not Polanski's only option. It was not even his best option." It said dismissal of the case, which would erase Polanski's guilty plea, would not be an "appropriate result", and that he still had other legal options.


title: Roman Polanski

text: In September 2011, the documentary film "" had its world premiere in Zürich, Switzerland. During an interview in the film, he offers his apology to Geimer: "She is a double victim: My victim, and a victim of the press." On this occasion, he collected the lifetime achievement award he was to have received at the time of his arrest two years earlier.


title: Roman Polanski

text: In 2004, Polanski sued "Vanity Fair" magazine in London for libel. A 2002 article in the magazine claimed that Polanski promised he would "make another Sharon Tate out of you" in an attempt to seduce a Scandinavian model while he was travelling to Tate's funeral. He received supporting testimony from Mia Farrow, and "Vanity Fair" "was unable to prove that the incident occurred". Polanski was awarded £50,000 in damages plus some of his legal costs.


title: Roman Polanski

text: In December 2017, Polanski filed a ₪1.5 million suit in Herzliya Magistrates' Court against Israeli journalist and filmmaker Matan Uziel. Polanski maintained that Uziel, through his website, www.imetpolanski.com, falsely reported that five women had come forward to accuse him of raping them. Polanski was suing for libel and defamation of character. Herzliya Magistrates' Court rejected Polanski's request to be exempt from appearing in court after filing the libel suit. While Polanski gave various reasons for his inability to appear, the presiding judge, Gilad Hess, dismissed them one by one and ordered Polanski to pay Uziel ₪10,000 in costs. In November 2018, it was published that Polanski decided to drop the lawsuit, and was ordered by the court to pay Uziel ₪30,000 (US$8,000) for court costs. The court accepted Uziel's request that the suit not be dropped, but rather that it be rejected, making Polanski unable to sue Uziel again over the same issue in the future.


title: Roman Polanski

text: In late December 2019, in Polanski's interviews with "Paris Match" and "Gazeta Wyborcza", the latter accused Matan Uziel of carefully orchestrating the attacks on his character and for playing a major role in designing an international campaign to besmirch his name and reputation in order to make his career fall from grace.


title: Roman Polanski

text: In 2010, British actress Charlotte Lewis said that Polanski had "forced himself" on her while she was auditioning for a role in Paris in 1983, when she was 16 and he was 50. In 1999, Lewis had given a very different account of events in an interview with the UK's "News of the World", which was unearthed by the French daily "Libération". In that interview, Lewis asserted that she had a six-month tryst with Polanski when she was 17: "I knew that Roman had done something bad in the United States, but I wanted to be his mistress," Lewis said, according to "Liberation". "I wanted him probably more than he wanted me." Lewis never mentioned any sexual abuse, and she said that their relationship ended when Polanski introduced her to Warren Beatty, and she claimed that they soon began an affair. She was cast in Polanski's 1986 film "Pirates", appeared at the Cannes film festival on his arm years after the alleged incident, and in an interview the year of the film's release, Lewis stated, "I'd love to have had a romantic relationship with [Polanski], and a physical one. You can't help falling in love with him. But he didn't want me that way."<ref name="Pape_5/17/2010"></ref>


title: Roman Polanski

text: In October 2017, German actress Renate Langer told Swiss police that Polanski raped her in Gstaad when she was 15, in 1972. The same month, Californian artist Marianne Barnard accused Polanski of having sexually assaulted her in 1975, when she was 10 years old.


title: Roman Polanski

text: In November 2019, French actress Valentine Monnier said Polanski violently raped her at a ski chalet in Gstaad in 1975.


title: Meryl Streep

text: Mary Louise Meryl Streep (born June 22, 1949) is an American actress. Often described as "the best actress of her generation", Streep is particularly known for her versatility and accent adaptability. She has received numerous accolades throughout her career spanning over five decades, including a record 21 Academy Award nominations, winning three, and a record 32 Golden Globe Award nominations, winning eight. She has also received two British Academy Film Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and three Primetime Emmy Awards, in addition to nominations for a Tony Award and six Grammy Awards.


title: Meryl Streep

text: Streep made her stage debut in 1975 "Trelawny of the Wells" and received a Tony Award nomination the following year for a double-bill production of "27 Wagons Full of Cotton" and "A Memory of Two Mondays". In 1977, she made her film debut in "Julia". In 1978, she won her first Primetime Emmy Award for a leading role in the mini-series "Holocaust", and received her first Oscar nomination for "The Deer Hunter". She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing a troubled wife in "Kramer vs. Kramer" (1979) and went on to establish herself as a film actor in the 1980s. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for starring as a Holocaust survivor in "Sophie's Choice" (1982) and had her biggest commercial success to that point in "Out of Africa" (1985). She continued to gain awards, and critical praise, for her work in the late 1980s and 1990s, but commercial success was varied, with the comedy "Death Becomes Her" (1992) and the drama "The Bridges of Madison County" (1995), her biggest earners in that period.


title: Meryl Streep

text: Streep reclaimed her stardom in the 2000s and 2010s with starring roles in "Adaptation" (2002), "The Hours" (2002)"," "The Devil Wears Prada" (2006), "Doubt" (2008), "Mamma Mia!" (2008), "Julie & Julia" (2009), "It's Complicated" (2009), "Into the Woods" (2014), "The Post" (2017) and "Little Women" (2019). She also won her third Academy Award for her portrayal of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in "The Iron Lady" (2011). Her stage roles include The Public Theater's 2001 revival of "The Seagull", and her television roles include two projects for HBO, the miniseries "Angels in America" (2003), for which she won another Primetime Emmy Award, and the drama series "Big Little Lies" (2019).


title: Meryl Streep

text: Streep has been the recipient of many honorary awards. She was awarded the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2004, Gala Tribute from the Film Society of Lincoln Center in 2008, and Kennedy Center Honor in 2011 for her contribution to American culture, through performing arts. President Barack Obama awarded her the National Medal of Arts in 2010, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014. In 2003, the French government made her a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters. She was awarded the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2017.


title: Meryl Streep

text: Mary Louise Streep was born on June 22, 1949, in Summit, New Jersey. She is the daughter of artist Mary Wilkinson Streep and pharmaceutical executive Harry William Streep, Jr. She has two younger brothers, Harry William Streep III and Dana David Streep, both actors. Her father was of German and Swiss descent; his lineage traced back to Loffenau, from where Streep's great-great-grandfather, Gottfried Streeb, immigrated to the United States and where one of her ancestors served as mayor (the surname was later changed to "Streep"). Another line of her father's family was from Giswil. Her mother had English, German, and Irish ancestry. Some of Streep's maternal ancestors lived in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, and were descended from 17th-century English immigrants. Her maternal great-great-grandparents, Manus McFadden and Grace Strain, were natives of the Horn Head district of Dunfanaghy in Ireland.


title: Meryl Streep

text: Streep's mother, whom she has compared in both appearance and manner to Dame Judi Dench, strongly encouraged her daughter and instilled confidence in her from a very young age. Streep said, "She was a mentor because she said to me, 'Meryl, you're capable. You're so great.' She was saying, 'You can do whatever you put your mind to. If you're lazy, you're not going to get it done. But if you put your mind to it, you can do anything.' And I believed her." Although she was naturally more introverted than her mother, when she later needed an injection of confidence in adulthood, she would consult her mother at times for advice. Streep was raised as a Presbyterian in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, and attended Cedar Hill Elementary School and the Oak Street School, which was a junior high school at that time. In her junior high debut, she starred as Louise Heller in the play "The Family Upstairs". In 1963, the family moved to Bernardsville, New Jersey, where she attended Bernards High School. Author Karina Longworth described her as a "gawky kid with glasses and frizzy hair", yet noted that she liked to show off in front of the camera in family home movies from a young age. At age 12, Streep was selected to sing at a school recital, leading to her having opera lessons from Estelle Liebling. Despite her talent, she later remarked, "I was singing something I didn't feel and understand. That was an important lesson—not to do that. To find the thing that I could feel through." She quit after four years. Streep had many Catholic school friends, and regularly attended Mass. She was a high school cheerleader for the Bernards High School Mountaineers and was also chosen as the homecoming queen her senior year. Her family lived on Old Fort Road.


title: Meryl Streep

text: Although Streep appeared in numerous school plays during her high school years, she was uninterested in serious theater until acting in the play "Miss Julie" at Vassar College in 1969, in which she gained attention across the campus. Vassar drama professor Clinton J. Atkinson noted, "I don't think anyone ever taught Meryl acting. She really taught herself." Streep demonstrated an early ability to mimic accents and to quickly memorize her lines. She received her BA "cum laude" in 1971, before applying for an MFA from the Yale School of Drama. At Yale, she supplemented her course fees by working as a waitress and typist, and appeared in over a dozen stage productions per year; at one point, she became overworked and developed ulcers, so she contemplated quitting acting and switching to study law. Streep played a variety of roles on stage, from Helena in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" to an 80-year-old woman in a wheelchair in a comedy written by then-unknown playwrights Christopher Durang and Albert Innaurato. She was a student of choreographer Carmen de Lavallade, whom she introduced at the 2017 Kennedy Center Honors. Another of her teachers was Robert Lewis, a co-founder of the Actors Studio. Streep disapproved of some of the acting exercises she was asked to do, remarking that one professor taught the emotional recall technique by delving into personal lives in a way she found "obnoxious". She received her MFA from Yale in 1975. She also enrolled as a visiting student at Dartmouth College in 1970, and received an honorary Doctor of Arts degree from the college in 1981.


title: Meryl Streep

text: One of Streep's first professional jobs in 1975 was at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's National Playwrights Conference, during which she acted in five plays over six weeks. She moved to New York City in 1975, and was cast by Joseph Papp in a production of "Trelawny of the Wells" at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, opposite Mandy Patinkin and John Lithgow. She went on to appear in five more roles in her first year in New York, including in Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival productions of "Henry V", "The Taming of the Shrew" with Raul Julia, and "Measure for Measure" opposite Sam Waterston and John Cazale. She entered into a relationship with Cazale at this time, and resided with him until his death three years later. She starred in the musical "Happy End" on Broadway, and won an Obie for her performance in the off-Broadway play "Alice at the Palace".


title: Meryl Streep

text: Although Streep had not aspired to become a film actor, Robert De Niro's performance in "Taxi Driver" (1976) had a profound impact on her; she said to herself, 'That's the kind of actor I want to be when I grow up.' Streep began auditioning for film roles, and underwent an unsuccessful audition for the lead role in Dino De Laurentiis's "King Kong". De Laurentiis, referring to Streep as she stood before him, said in Italian to his son: "This is so ugly. Why did you bring me this?" Unknown to Laurentiis, Streep understood Italian, and she remarked, "I'm very sorry that I'm not as beautiful as I should be, but, you know – this is it. This is what you get." She continued to work on Broadway, appearing in the 1976 double bill of Tennessee Williams' "27 Wagons Full of Cotton" and Arthur Miller's "A Memory of Two Mondays". She received a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play. Streep's other Broadway credits include Anton Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard" and the Bertolt Brecht-Kurt Weill musical "Happy End", in which she had originally appeared off-Broadway at the Chelsea Theater Center. She received Drama Desk Award nominations for both productions.


title: Meryl Streep

text: Streep's first feature film role came opposite Jane Fonda in the 1977 film "Julia", in which she had a small role during a flashback sequence. Most of her scenes were edited out, but the brief time on screen horrified the actress:


title: Meryl Streep

text: However, Streep cites Fonda as having a lasting influence on her as an actress, and has credited her as "open[ing] probably more doors than I probably even know about".


title: Meryl Streep

text: Robert De Niro, who had spotted Streep in her stage production of "The Cherry Orchard", suggested that she play the role of his girlfriend in the war film "The Deer Hunter" (1978). Cazale, who had been diagnosed with lung cancer, was also cast in the film, and Streep took on the role of a "vague, stock girlfriend" to remain with Cazale for the duration of filming. Longworth notes that Streep:


title: Meryl Streep

text: Pauline Kael, who later became a strong critic of Streep, remarked that she was a "real beauty" who brought much freshness to the film with her performance. The film's success exposed Streep to a wider audience and earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.


title: Meryl Streep

text: In the 1978 miniseries "Holocaust", Streep played the leading role of a German woman married to a Jewish artist played by James Woods in Nazi era Germany. She found the material to be "unrelentingly noble" and professed to have taken on the role for financial gain. Streep travelled to Germany and Austria for filming while Cazale remained in New York. Upon her return, Streep found that Cazale's illness had progressed, and she nursed him until his death on March 12, 1978. With an estimated audience of 109 million, "Holocaust" brought a wider degree of public recognition to Streep, who found herself "on the verge of national visibility". She won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie for her performance. Despite the awards success, Streep was still not enthusiastic towards her film career and preferred acting on stage.


title: Meryl Streep

text: She played the supporting role of Leilah in Wendy Wasserstein's "Uncommon Women and Others" in a May 1978 "Theater in America" television production for PBS's Great Performances. She replaced Glenn Close, who played the role in the Off-Broadway production at the Phoenix Theatre.


title: Meryl Streep

text: Hoping to divert herself from the grief of Cazale's death, Streep accepted a role in "The Seduction of Joe Tynan" (1979) as the chirpy love interest of Alan Alda, later commenting that she played it on "automatic pilot". She performed the role of Katherine in "The Taming of the Shrew" for Shakespeare in the Park, and also played a supporting role in "Manhattan" (1979) for Woody Allen. Streep later said that Allen did not provide her with a complete script, giving her only the six pages of her own scenes, and did not permit her to improvise a word of her dialogue.


title: Meryl Streep

text: In the drama "Kramer vs. Kramer", Streep was cast opposite Dustin Hoffman as an unhappily married woman who abandons her husband and child. Streep thought that the script portrayed the female character as "too evil" and insisted that it was not representative of real women who faced marriage breakdown and child custody battles. The makers agreed with her, and the script was revised. In preparing for the part, Streep spoke to her own mother about her life as a wife with a career, and frequented the Upper East Side neighborhood in which the film was set, watching the interactions between parents and children. The director Robert Benton allowed Streep to write her own dialogue in two key scenes, despite some objection from Hoffman, who "hated her guts" at first. Hoffman and producer Stanley R. Jaffe later spoke of Streep's tirelessness, with Hoffman commenting: "She's extraordinarily hard-working, to the extent that she's obsessive. I think that she thinks about nothing else, but what she's doing." The film was controversial among feminists, but it was a role which film critic Stephen Farber believed displayed Streep's "own emotional intensity", writing that she was one of the "rare performers who can imbue the most routine moments with a hint of mystery".


title: Meryl Streep

text: For "Kramer vs. Kramer", Streep won both the Golden Globe Award and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, which she famously left in the ladies' room after giving her speech. She was also awarded the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress, National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress and National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress for her collective work in her three film releases of 1979. Both "The Deer Hunter" and "Kramer vs. Kramer" were major commercial successes and were consecutive winners of the Academy Award for Best Picture.


title: Meryl Streep

text: In 1979, Streep began workshopping "Alice in Concert", a musical version of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", with writer and composer Elizabeth Swados and director Joseph Papp; the show was put on at New York's Public Theater from December 1980. Frank Rich of "The New York Times" referred to Streep as the production's "one wonder", but questioned why she devoted so much energy to it. By 1980, Streep had progressed to leading roles in films. She was featured on the cover of "Newsweek" magazine with the headline "A Star for the 80s"; Jack Kroll commented,


title: Meryl Streep

text: The story within a story drama "The French Lieutenant's Woman" (1981) was Streep's first leading role. The film paired Streep with Jeremy Irons as contemporary actors, telling their modern story, as well as the Victorian era drama they were performing. Streep developed an English accent for the part, but considered herself a misfit for the role: " I couldn't help wishing that I was more beautiful". A "New York" magazine article commented that, while many female stars of the past had cultivated a singular identity in their films, Streep was a "chameleon", willing to play any type of role. Streep was awarded a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her work. The following year, she re-united with Robert Benton for the psychological thriller, "Still of the Night" (1982), co-starring Roy Scheider and Jessica Tandy. Vincent Canby, writing for "The New York Times", noted that the film was an homage to the works of Alfred Hitchcock, but that one of its main weaknesses was a lack of chemistry between Streep and Scheider, concluding that Streep "is stunning, but she's not on screen anywhere near long enough".


title: Meryl Streep

text: Greater success came later in the year when Streep starred in the drama "Sophie's Choice" (also 1982), portraying a Polish survivor of Auschwitz caught in a love triangle between a young naïve writer (Peter MacNicol) and a Jewish intellectual (Kevin Kline). Streep's emotional dramatic performance and her apparent mastery of a Polish accent drew praise. William Styron wrote the novel with Ursula Andress in mind for the role of Sophie, but Streep was determined to get the role. Streep filmed the "choice" scene in one take and refused to do it again, finding it extremely painful and emotionally exhausting. That scene, in which Streep is ordered by an SS guard at Auschwitz to choose which of her two children would be gassed and which would proceed to the labor camp, is her most famous scene, according to Emma Brockes of "The Guardian" who wrote in 2006: "It's classic Streep, the kind of scene that makes your scalp tighten, but defter in a way is her handling of smaller, harder-to-grasp emotions". Among several acting awards, Streep won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance, and her characterization was voted the third greatest movie performance of all time by "Premiere" magazine. Roger Ebert said of her delivery:


title: Meryl Streep

text: Pauline Kael, on the contrary, called the film an "infuriatingly bad movie", and thought that Streep "decorporealizes" herself, which she believed explained why her movie heroines "don't seem to be full characters, and why there are no incidental joys to be had from watching her".


title: Meryl Streep

text: In 1983, Streep played her first non-fictional character, the nuclear whistleblower and labor union activist Karen Silkwood, who died in a suspicious car accident while investigating alleged wrongdoing at the Kerr-McGee plutonium plant, in Mike Nichols' biographical film "Silkwood". Streep felt a personal connection to Silkwood, and in preparation, she met with people close to the woman, and in doing so realized that each person saw a different aspect of her personality. She said:


title: Meryl Streep

text: Jack Kroll of "Newsweek" considered Streep's characterization to have been "brilliant", while Silkwood's boyfriend Drew Stephens expressed approval in that Streep had played Karen as a human being rather than a myth, despite Karen's father Bill thinking that Streep and the film had dumbed his daughter down. Pauline Kael believed that Streep had been miscast. Streep next played opposite Robert De Niro in the romance "Falling in Love" (1984), which was poorly received, and portrayed a fighter for the French Resistance during World War II in the British drama "Plenty" (1985), adapted from the play by David Hare. For the latter, Roger Ebert wrote that she conveyed "great subtlety; it is hard to play an unbalanced, neurotic, self-destructive woman, and do it with such gentleness and charm ... Streep creates a whole character around a woman who could have simply been a catalogue of symptoms." In 2008, Molly Haskell praised Streep's performance in "Plenty", believing it to be "one of Streep's most difficult and ambiguous" films and "most feminist" role.


title: Meryl Streep

text: Longworth considers Streep's next release, "Out of Africa" (1985), to have established her as a Hollywood superstar. In the film, Streep starred as the Danish writer Karen Blixen, opposite Robert Redford's Denys Finch Hatton. Director Sydney Pollack was initially dubious about Streep in the role, as he did not think she was sexy enough, and had considered Jane Seymour for the part. Pollack recalls that Streep impressed him in a different way: "She was so direct, so honest, so without bullshit. There was no shielding between her and me." Streep and Pollack often clashed during the 101-day shoot in Kenya, particularly over Blixen's voice. Streep had spent much time listening to tapes of Blixen, and began speaking in an old-fashioned and aristocratic fashion, which Pollack thought excessive. A significant commercial success, the film won a Golden Globe for Best Picture. It also earned Streep another Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, and the film ultimately won Best Picture. Film critic Stanley Kauffmann praised her performance, writing "Meryl Streep is back in top form. This means her performance in "Out of Africa" is at the highest level of acting in film today."


title: Meryl Streep

text: Longworth notes that the dramatic success of "Out of Africa" led to a backlash of critical opinion against Streep in the years that followed, especially as she was now demanding $4 million a picture. Unlike other stars at the time, such as Sylvester Stallone and Tom Cruise, Streep "never seemed to play herself", and certain critics felt her technical finesse led people to literally see her acting. Her next films did not appeal to a wide audience; she co-starred with Jack Nicholson in the dramas "Heartburn" (1986) and "Ironweed" (1987), in which she sang onscreen for the first time since the "Great Performances" telecast of the Phoenix Theater production of "Secret Service" (1977). In "Evil Angels" (1988), she played Lindy Chamberlain, an Australian woman who had been convicted of the murder of her infant daughter despite claiming that the baby had been taken by a dingo. Filmed in Australia, Streep won the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, a Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival, and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress. Streep has said of developing the Australian accent in the film: "I had to study a little bit for Australian because it's not dissimilar [to American], so it's like coming from Italian to Spanish. You get a little mixed up." Vincent Canby of "The New York Times" referred to her performance as "another stunning performance", played with "the kind of virtuosity that seems to re-define the possibilities of screen acting".


title: Meryl Streep

text: In 1989, Streep lobbied to play the lead role in Oliver Stone's adaption of the play "Evita", but two months before filming was due to commence, she dropped out, citing "exhaustion" initially, although it was later revealed that there was a dispute over her salary. By the end of the decade, Streep actively looked to star in a comedy. She found the role in "She-Devil" (1989), a satire that parodied societal obsession with beauty and cosmetic surgery, in which she played a glamorous writer. Though the film was not a success, Richard Corliss of "Time" wrote that Streep was the "one reason" to see it, and observed that it marked a departure from the dramatic roles she was known to play. Reacting to her string of poorly received films, Streep said: "Audiences are shrinking; as the marketing strategy defines more and more narrowly who they want to reach males from 16 to 25 – it's become a chicken-and-egg syndrome. Which came first? First, they release all these summer movies, then do a demographic survey of who's going to see them."


title: Meryl Streep

text: Biographer Karen Hollinger described the early 1990s as a downturn in the popularity of Streep's films, attributing this partly to a critical perception that her comedies had been an attempt to convey a lighter image following several serious, but commercially unsuccessful, dramas, and, more significantly, to the lack of options available to an actress in her forties. Streep commented that she had limited her options by her preference to work in Los Angeles, close to her family, a situation that she had anticipated in a 1981 interview when she commented, "By the time an actress hits her mid-forties, no one's interested in her anymore. And if you want to fit a couple of babies into that schedule as well, you've got to pick your parts with great care." At the Screen Actor's Guild National Women's Conference in 1990, Streep keynoted the first national event, emphasizing the decline in women's work opportunities, pay parity, and role models within the film industry. She criticized the film industry for downplaying the importance of women both on screen and off.


title: Meryl Streep

text: After roles in the comedy-drama "Postcards from the Edge" (1990), and the comedy-fantasy "Defending Your Life" (1991), Streep starred with Goldie Hawn in the farcical black comedy, "Death Becomes Her" (1992), with Bruce Willis as their co-star. Streep persuaded writer David Koepp to re-write several of the scenes, particularly the one in which her character has an affair with a younger man, which she believed was "unrealistically male" in its conception. The seven-month shoot was the longest of Streep's career, during which she got into character by "thinking about being slightly pissed off all of the time". Due to Streep's allergies to numerous cosmetics, special prosthetics had to be designed to age her by ten years to look 54, although Streep believed that they made her look nearer 70. Longworth considers "Death Becomes Her" to have been "the most physical performance Streep had yet committed to screen, all broad weeping, smirking, and eye-rolling". Although it was a commercial success, earning $15.1 million in just five days, Streep's contribution to comedy was generally not taken well by critics. "Time"s Richard Corliss wrote approvingly of Streep's "wicked-witch routine" but dismissed the film as ""She-Devil" with a make-over" and one which "hates women". Streep later admitted to having disliked filming the scenes involving heavy special effects, and vowed never to work again on a film with heavy special effects.


title: Meryl Streep

text: Streep appeared with Jeremy Irons, Glenn Close and Winona Ryder in "The House of the Spirits" (1993), set in Chile during Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship. The film was not well received by critics. Anthony Lane of "The New Yorker" wrote: "This is really quite an achievement. It brings together Jeremy Irons, Meryl Streep, Winona Ryder, Antonio Banderas, and Vanessa Redgrave and insures that, without exception, they all give their worst performances ever". The following year, Streep starred in "The River Wild", as the mother of children on a whitewater rafting trip who encounter two violent criminals (Kevin Bacon and John C. Reilly) in the wilderness. Though critical reaction was generally mixed, Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" found her to be "strong, sassy and looser than she has ever been onscreen".


title: Meryl Streep

text: Streep's most successful film of the decade was the romantic drama "The Bridges of Madison County" (1995) directed by Clint Eastwood, who adapted the film from Robert James Waller's novel of the same name. It relates the story of Robert Kincaid (Eastwood), a photographer working for "National Geographic", who has a love affair with a middle-aged Italian farm wife Francesca (Streep). Though Streep disliked the novel it was based on, she found the script to be a special opportunity for an actress her age. She gained weight for the part and dressed differently from the character in the book to emulate voluptuous Italian film stars such as Sophia Loren. Both Loren and Anna Magnani were an influence in her portrayal, and Streep viewed Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Mamma Roma" (1962) prior to filming. The film was a box office hit and grossed over $70 million in the United States. The film, unlike the novel, was warmly received by critics. Janet Maslin of "The New York Times" wrote that Eastwood had managed to create "a moving, elegiac love story at the heart of Mr. Waller's self-congratulatory overkill", while Joe Morgenstern of "The Wall Street Journal" described it as "one of the most pleasurable films in recent memory". Longworth believes that Streep's performance was "crucial to transforming what could have been a weak soap opera into a vibrant work of historical fiction implicitly critiquing postwar America's stifling culture of domesticity". She considers it to have been the role in which Streep became "arguably the first middle-aged actress to be taken seriously by Hollywood as a romantic heroine".


title: Meryl Streep

text: Streep played the estranged sister of Bessie (Diane Keaton), a woman battling leukemia, in "Marvin's Room" (1996), an adaptation of the play by Scott McPherson. Streep recommended Keaton for the role. The film also featured Leonardo DiCaprio as the rebellious son of Streep's character. Roger Ebert stated that, "Streep and Keaton, in their different styles, find ways to make Lee and Bessie into much more than the expression of their problems." The film was well received, and Streep earned another Golden Globe nomination for her performance.


title: Meryl Streep

text: Streep's performance in "...First Do No Harm" (1997) garnered her a second Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress – Miniseries or a Movie. In 1998, Streep first appeared opposite Michael Gambon and Catherine McCormack in Pat O'Connor's "Dancing at Lughnasa", another Broadway adaptation, which was entered into the Venice Film Festival in its year of release. Janet Maslin of "The New York Times" remarked that "Meryl Streep has made many a grand acting gesture in her career, but the way she simply peers out a window in "Dancing at Lughnasa" ranks with the best. Everything the viewer need know about Kate Mundy, the woman she plays here, is written on that prim, lonely face and its flabbergasted gaze." Later that year, she played a housewife dying of cancer in "One True Thing". The film met with positive reviews. Mick LaSalle in the "San Francisco Chronicle" declared, "After "One True Thing", critics who persist in the fiction that Streep is a cold and technical actress will need to get their heads examined. She is so instinctive and natural – so thoroughly in the moment and operating on flights of inspiration – that she's able to give us a woman who's at once wildly idiosyncratic and utterly believable." "Los Angeles Times" film critic Kenneth Turan noted that her role "is one of the least self-consciously dramatic and surface showy of her career," but she "adds a level of honesty and reality that makes [her performance] one of her most moving."


title: Meryl Streep

text: Streep portrayed Roberta Guaspari, a real-life New Yorker who found passion and enlightenment teaching violin to the inner-city kids of East Harlem, in the music drama "Music of the Heart" (1999). Streep replaced Madonna, who dropped out of the project before filming began due to creative differences with director Wes Craven. Required to play the violin, Streep underwent two months of intense training, five to six hours a day. Streep received nominations for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award for her performance. Roger Ebert wrote that "Meryl Streep is known for her mastery of accents; she may be the most versatile speaker in the movies. Here you might think she has no accent, unless you've heard her real speaking voice; then you realize that Guaspari's speaking style is no less a particular achievement than Streep's other accents. This is not Streep's voice, but someone else's – with a certain flat quality, as if later education and refinement came after a somewhat unsophisticated childhood."


title: Meryl Streep

text: Streep entered the 2000s with a voice cameo in Steven Spielberg's "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" (2001), a science fiction film about a childlike android, played by Haley Joel Osment. The same year, Streep co-hosted the annual Nobel Peace Prize Concert with Liam Neeson which was held in Oslo, Norway, on December 11, 2001, in honour of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, the United Nations and Kofi Annan. In 2001, Streep returned to the stage for the first time in more than twenty years, playing Arkadina in The Public Theater's revival of Anton Chekhov's "The Seagull", directed by Mike Nichols and co-starring Kevin Kline, Natalie Portman, John Goodman, Marcia Gay Harden, Stephen Spinella, Debra Monk, Larry Pine and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Streep's son, Henry Gummer, later to be known as musician Henry Wolfe, was also featured in the play in the role of Yakov, a hired workman.


title: Meryl Streep

text: The same year, Streep began work on Spike Jonze's comedy-drama "Adaptation." (2002), in which she portrayed real-life journalist Susan Orlean. Lauded by critics and viewers alike, the film won Streep her fourth Golden Globe in the Best Supporting Actress category. A. O. Scott in "The New York Times" considered Streep's portrayal of Orlean to have been "played with impish composure", noting the contrast in her "wittily realized" character with love interest Chris Cooper's "lank-haired, toothless charisma" as the autodidact arrested for poaching rare orchids. Streep appeared alongside Nicole Kidman and Julianne Moore in Stephen Daldry's "The Hours" (2002), based on the 1999 novel by Michael Cunningham. Focusing on three women of different generations whose lives are interconnected by the novel "Mrs. Dalloway" by Virginia Woolf, the film was generally well received and won all three leading actresses a Silver Bear for Best Actress.


title: Meryl Streep

text: In 2003, Streep re-united with Mike Nichols to star with Al Pacino and Emma Thompson in the HBO's adaptation of Tony Kushner's six-hour play "Angels in America", the story of two couples whose relationships dissolve amidst the backdrop of Reagan era politics. Streep, who was cast in four roles in the miniseries, received her second Emmy Award and fifth Golden Globe for her performance. She appeared in Jonathan Demme's moderately successful remake of "The Manchurian Candidate" in 2004, co-starring Denzel Washington, playing the role of a woman who is both a U.S. senator and the manipulative, ruthless mother of a vice-presidential candidate. The same year, she played the supporting role of Aunt Josephine in "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events" alongside Jim Carrey, based on the first three novels in Snicket's book series. The black comedy received generally favorable reviews from critics, and won the Academy Award for Best Makeup. Streep also narrated the film "Monet's Palate". Streep was next cast in the comedy film "Prime" (2005), directed by Ben Younger. In the film, she played Lisa Metzger, the Jewish psychoanalyst of a divorced and lonesome business-woman, played by Uma Thurman, who enters a relationship with Metzger's 23-year-old son (Bryan Greenberg). A modest mainstream success, it eventually grossed US$67.9 million internationally. Roger Ebert noted how Streep had "that ability to cut through the solemnity of a scene with a zinger that reveals how all human effort is, after all, comic at some level".