The United States has formally asked Switzerland to extradite film director Roman Polanski, Swiss authorities said Friday. The Academy Award-winning director was arrested in Switzerland last month on a U.S. arrest warrant stemming from a 1977 sex case involving a 13-year-old girl. He is fighting extradition. The U.S. Embassy in Berne submitted the formal extradition request to Switzerland's Federal Office of Justice on Thursday night, Swiss justice officials said. Swiss justice officials said they will now forward the extradition request ...

Roman Polanski in 1993 agreed to pay his sexual assault victim $500,000 to settle a damage claim she filed against the fugitive film director, according to court papers released Friday. Polanski still owed the money -- plus another $100,000 in interest -- three years after the settlement, according to the documents. It's not clear if Polanski ever completed paying the claim, which was filed 12 years after the crime. The court papers document efforts by the victim's lawyers to garnish ...

A retired prosecutor whose comments in a 2008 HBO documentary threatened to derail a 31-year-old sex case against film director Roman Polanski now says he lied. David Wells told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Thursday that he "buttered up" his role in the Polanski case for the documentary crew. He said he lied about trying to goad a judge to sentence Polanski to prison in 1978 for having sex with a 13-year-old girl. Wells' comments in "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired" ...

While several high-profile actors and directors have rallied around Roman Polanski, not everyone in Hollywood believes he should be freed and forgiven. In the face of a petition signed by notables such as Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese and John Landis calling for the immediate release of Polanski following his detainment in Switzerland, a backlash is building against such support. "I can't believe that Hollywood has separated itself so completely from American morality," said Paul Petersen, a former child actor ...

When filmmaker Roman Polanski was arrested Saturday in Switzerland, he was on his way to accept an award for Lifetime Achievement at the Zurich Film Festival. Polanski's friend, Swiss filmmaker Otto Weisser, was among the first to publicly run to his defense. "This is for me a shock. I am ashamed to be Swiss, that the Swiss is doing such a thing to brilliant fantastic genius, that millions and millions of people love his work," Weisser said upon learning ...

If you think you were confused and challenged by the famously labyrinthine plot of "Chinatown," imagine how the screenwriter felt. "I did lose my way many times," said Robert Towne in a recent interview. "It took an ungodly amount of time to work on it -- it was 10 months of solid work, and before that, there were several months of letting it gel enough to write it." The process was worth it to Towne, however -- he walked away ...

"I did lose my way many times," said Robert Towne in a recent interview. "It took an ungodly amount of time to work on it -- it was 10 months of solid work, and before that, there were several months of letting it gel enough to write it." The process was worth it to Towne, however -- he walked away with an Oscar for best original screenplay, the only one the film received in a year mostly overrun by ...

Filmmaker Roman Polanski has been arrested on an arrest warrant stemming from a decades-old sex charge, Swiss police said Sunday. The Academy Award-winning director pleaded guilty in 1977 to a single count of having unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, acknowledging he had sex with a 13-year-old girl, but fled the United States before he could be sentenced. U.S. authorities issued a warrant for his arrest in 1978. He was taken into custody trying to enter Switzerland on Saturday, Zurich ...

The alleged victim in a 1977 sexual assault case against director Roman Polanski has filed court papers seeking dismissal of the charges against him. The woman's declaration seeking dismissal was filed Monday in Los Angeles, California, in connection with Polanski's efforts to have the 31-year-old case dismissed. Polanski, 75, has lived in exile in France since fleeing the United States in 1978 after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse. Polanski admitted to having sex with a 13-year-old girl, ...

The judge has been dead for 15 years, and no one has been able to find the criminal case file since 2004. Yet a 1977 sex scandal involving famed director Roman Polanski and a 13-year-old girl continues to stalk the courts of Los Angeles. Attorneys for the 75-year-old Academy Award-winning director will ask a judge Tuesday to put the matter to rest once and for all. Lawyers Douglas Dalton and Chad Hummel last month filed a 239-page dismissal "request," citing ...