Roman Polanski makes rare comment on rape case: 'It's over'

Roman Polanski is speaking out about his 1970s rape accusation, saying in a rare interview that he feels he’s completed his sentence.

“As far as what I did: It’s over. I pleaded guilty,” Polanski told The Hollywood Reporter. “I went to jail. I came back to the United States to do it, people forget about that, or don’t even know. I then was locked up here [in Zurich] after this festival. So in the sum, I did about four or five times than what was promised to me.”

Polanski is in Zurich to promote his newest film, Based on a True Story, which will make its premiere at the Zurich Film Festival. In 2009, Polanski was detained by Zurich police after the United States attempted to have him extradited to face charges relating to a decades-old rape case. Polanski fled the United States in 1978 after he pleaded guilty to raping Samantha Geimer, who was 13 at the time. After being detained in Switzerland, he was jailed and placed on house arrest for several months, until the Swiss government officially declined to deport him.

Since then, Polanski has remained a fugitive. The case is still ongoing, despite Geimer’s requests to have it dismissed.

“As you know Samantha Geimer has been asking for over 30 years for this thing to end,” Polanski added. “But, I’m sorry the judges who dealt with it the last 40 years were corrupted, one covering for the other. So I don’t [sic] maybe one of them will [eventually] stop doing it.”

Polanski also told The Hollywood Reporter that it was “unfortunate” that the case has affected how his films are viewed. Eva Green and Polanski’s wife Emmanuelle Seigner star in Based on a True Story, a French-language psychological thriller about two female writers.