Roman Polanski, director of Rosemary’s Baby and Chinatown, has been awarded £50,000 in damages in a libel case against Vanity Fair. Polanski had sued the magazine after it published Queen of the Night, a feature by A.E. Hotchner on the New York restaurant Elaine’s in its July 2002 issue.
The defamatory passage was a quote from Lewis Lapham (p. 154): “The only time I ever saw people gasp in Elaine’s was when Roman Polanski walked in just after his wife Sharon Tate had been viciously murdered by the Manson clan. I was sitting at a table with a friend of mine who had brought the most gorgeous Swedish girl you ever laid eyes on. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more beautiful woman. Polanski came over and asked to join us. It turned out that Polanski had been in London when the atrocity took place, and he was on his way back to Hollywood for the burial. The Swedish beauty was sitting next to me. Polanski pulled up a chair and inserted himself between us, immediately focusing his attention on the beauty, inundating her with his Polish charm. Fascinated by his performance, I watched as he slid his hand inside her thigh and began a long, honeyed spiel which ended with the promise ‘And I will make another Sharon Tate out of you.’”
The article was commissioned for the magazine’s US edition, though it was also reprinted in the UK edition, and Polanski sued in the UK as British libel law — unlike the US — does not require proof of ‘actual malice’. Polanski became the first person to give evidence via video link at a British libel trial, as he lives in France to avoid extradition to the US over a 1977 conviction for sex with a minor. After the damages were awarded, Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter questioned how “a man who lives in France can sue a magazine published in America in a British court”.
The defamatory passage was a quote from Lewis Lapham (p. 154): “The only time I ever saw people gasp in Elaine’s was when Roman Polanski walked in just after his wife Sharon Tate had been viciously murdered by the Manson clan. I was sitting at a table with a friend of mine who had brought the most gorgeous Swedish girl you ever laid eyes on. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more beautiful woman. Polanski came over and asked to join us. It turned out that Polanski had been in London when the atrocity took place, and he was on his way back to Hollywood for the burial. The Swedish beauty was sitting next to me. Polanski pulled up a chair and inserted himself between us, immediately focusing his attention on the beauty, inundating her with his Polish charm. Fascinated by his performance, I watched as he slid his hand inside her thigh and began a long, honeyed spiel which ended with the promise ‘And I will make another Sharon Tate out of you.’”
The article was commissioned for the magazine’s US edition, though it was also reprinted in the UK edition, and Polanski sued in the UK as British libel law — unlike the US — does not require proof of ‘actual malice’. Polanski became the first person to give evidence via video link at a British libel trial, as he lives in France to avoid extradition to the US over a 1977 conviction for sex with a minor. After the damages were awarded, Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter questioned how “a man who lives in France can sue a magazine published in America in a British court”.
