Polanski to fight extradition

Roman Polanski, Oscar-winning director of "The Pianist" who was arrested in Zurich over a U.S. charge of having sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977, will fight extradition to the United States, his lawyer was quoted as saying on Monday.

Here are some key facts about Polanski, who has French and Polish citizenship.

THE CASE:

* Polanski is wanted in the United States after pleading guilty in 1977 to having sex with the 13-year-old Samantha Geimer, in the home of actor Jack Nicholson. Under his plea agreement, Polanski would have been sentenced to the 42 days he had already served in jail under psychiatric evaluation.

* But Polanski believed the judge, who has since died, might alter the plea agreement and require him to spend years in jail, so he skipped bail in 1978 and fled to France before the sentence was pronounced.

* A 2008 documentary film, "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired" looked at the case in detail. It included interviews with Geimer and lawyers involved in the case. Also in 2008, Polanski's lawyers sought to have the case dismissed based on an idea advanced in the film that there had been prosecutorial and judicial misconduct 30 years earlier.

* In an interview to promote the film, Geimer told Reuters, "I don't think he's a danger to society" and "I don't think he needs to be locked up forever, and no one has ever come out, ever, besides me and accused him of anything."

* Earlier this year, Polanski's attorneys lost their bid for a dismissal when Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza ruled their legal motion "discloses no legal grounds for disqualification" of the original case.

EARLY LIFE:

* Born Raymond Polanski to Polish-Jewish parents on August 18, 1933, he spent the first three years of his life in Paris before the family returned to Poland.

* In World War Two when the Germans sealed off the Jewish ghetto in Krakow in 1940, his father shouted to Roman to run and he escaped. His mother later died in an Auschwitz gas chamber.

* In August 1969, Polanski's wife, actress Sharon Tate, and six others, were hacked to death by followers of cult leader Charles Manson at his Hollywood home in a random attack.

FILM CAREER:

* His first full-length feature film after graduation, "Knife in the Water," won a number of awards and, most important for Polanski, was his ticket to Hollywood movies.

* Few directors have laid bare their inner fantasies and fears like Polanski in films which have included "Repulsion", "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Tenant" -- films of disturbing brutality shot through with voyeurism and dark humour.

* In 1974 Polanski had another major Hollywood success with "Chinatown", a stylish thriller starring Jack Nicholson.

* Polanski won a best director Oscar for his 2002 Holocaust film "The Pianist," as well as the Cannes film festival's Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) that same year.

* Harrison Ford, who was presenting the Oscar, accepted it on Polanski's behalf because the director could not travel to Los Angeles due to the criminal charge. The audience gave Polanski a standing ovation.

* He is married to French actress Emmanuelle Seigner, with whom he has two children.