The Hollywood director wanted in 188 countries

Polish citizen Roman Polanski is facing extradition to the US. Picture: Anne Christine Poujoulat Source: AFP

HE is the Hollywood director convicted of having sex with a 13-year-old girl and wanted in 188 countries.

The 81-year-old is currently living in Poland and fighting an extradition order which could see him spend considerable time behind bars.

This is the story of Roman Polanski and that day: March 10, 1977.

Polanski had sex with Samantha Geimer (pictured), aged 13 Source: News Limited

Polish director Roman Polanski. Source: News Limited

At home in his native Poland, Roman Polanski has been free to make movies. Good movies. Award winning movies. He will continue doing just that for at least another two months after a closed court hearing lasting nine hours adjourned on Wednesday to resume in April.

He is a world away from Hollywood and from Samantha Geimer, who he had sex with when she was just 13. He is a world away from the child sex case that threatened his career and his freedom. US prosecutors want to bridge that gap.

MOVIES, DRUGS AND OSCARS — WHO IS ROMAN POLANSKI?

Polanski is known for two things. His movies and that child sex case.

Educated in Poland, Polanski burst on to the Hollywood scene with his first feature-length film, Knife in the Water, in 1962, a film shot with only three actors and which narrowly missed out on an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

He wrote and directed a number of films after moving to Hollywood but tragedy struck and temporarily derailed his career in 1969 when his pregnant wife, the actor Sharon Tate, was murdered.

Tate was killed in Polanski's Los Angeles home while he was overseas. He took a break from directing and moved back to Poland.

He made Macbeth in 1971 and hit movies The Tenant and Chinatown in the next five years. But in 1977, things went terribly wrong again.

Polanski's wife Sharon was murdered in his California home in 1969. Source: News Limited

"IT WASN'T 'RAPE' RAPE" — WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN 1977

Roman Polanski thought Samantha Geimer would be perfect for the French edition of Vogue. Samantha Geimer thought she was going to be famous.

Court records and Geimer's own accounts of March 10, 1977 make for disturbing reading. What we know to be true is that Polanski had organised to photograph Geimer in the Mulholland Drive home of actor Jack Nicholson, who was away at the time. He had asked permission from Geimer's mother, who was all for it.

During the shoot, Polanski took photographs of Geimer topless in the spa and on the kitchen counter. A grand jury would later hear that the pair consumed drugs, supplied by the Polish director, and that, despite her protests, Polanski performed sex acts upon her.

On daytime TV in the US in 2009, co-host of The View Whoopi Goldberg commented that the sex between Polanski and Geimer didn't qualify as "rape-rape". That sparked a heated backlash that led Geimer herself to set the record straight.

In her memoir published in 2013, 50-year-old Geimer described the incident. The Los Angeles Times reported that her description was "restrained".

"He holds my arms at my sides and kisses me," Geimer wrote. "I say, 'No, come on,' but between the pill and the champagne it's like my own voice is very far away."

Polanski was arrested and charged with rape by use of drugs, perversion, sodomy and furnishing a controlled substance to a minor. He took a plea bargain to a lesser charge of unlawful sexual intercourse.

Then he fled.

America wants Polanski behind bars. Source: Supplied

THE EXTRADITION 48 YEARS IN THE MAKING

Polanski served 42 days in prison ahead of final sentencing where it was believed the judge would order probation. He fled to France because he was worried the judge would enforce prison time.

In France, where he landed and where he holds dual citizenship, Polanski was accepted as a man who has "suffered enough". Those are the words of Frédéric Mitterrand, the former French culture minister.

Instead of a jail cell, Polanski has taken up residence in flashy homes in France, Switzerland and Poland. He currently rents an apartment in Krakow, where he lived as a child in the 1930s.

In Poland, which has long insisted that the crime committed by Polanski falls outside its statute of limitations, the homegrown director has been free to make films.

He made The Pianist (2002), Oliver Twist (2005), The Ghost Writer (2010) and Carnage (2011). He is currently planning his next film about the Dreyfus affair — an account of a French officer at the turn of the 20th century who was jailed for communicating French secrets to Germany.

But despite the years, US officials say Polanski should face the music.

Samantha Geimer in 2008. Source: AP

Roman Polanski in 2008. Source: AP

JUST ANOTHER ARREST IN A SERIES OF ARRESTS?

Polanski was arrested in Switzerland in September, 2009, on a warrant for the 1977 arrest. He was later released on bail before Swiss authorities announced he would not be sent to the US.

During his time under arrest, hundreds of film makers and industry professionals signed a petition for his release. The Free Polanski movement was officially underway.

A man shows a "free Polanski" sign on his shirt during the Zurich film festival in 2009. Picture: Sebastien Bozon Source: News Limited

This week's hearing attracted the same Polanski fanatics. But the result, to be determined in the coming months, could be very different. The district court in Krakow must first decide whether the US case for extradition is legal. The justice ministry will then rule on whether he will be extradited.

It's not yet clear how US authorities will proceed if Polanski is extradited but his lawyers will argue, if they haven't already, that the extradition request is unjustified given Polanski accepted a US plea deal all those years ago. After the first day of the hearing, Polanski told reporters he was tired and "wanted to forget" the incident.

The latest hearing comes two months after a similar request from US authorities when Polanski travelled to Warsaw for the opening of a museum.

In Las Vegas, where Geimer was living in 2013 with her husband David, the 48-year-old told the Guardian she was doing everything she could to move on. But she, too, thought Polanski should appear in a US court.

"Because that's what would be fair," she said. "It's the right thing."

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