Roman Polanski at 80: the film-maker at work - in pictures

Roman Polanski in Krakow, aged about four, shortly after his parents, Ryszard and Bula, had decided to move back to Poland from France. Photograph: The Roman Polanski Archive

Polanski with assistant director Andrzej Kostenko (left) and actor Kuba Goldberg (centre) in Gdansk, location hunting for his early short Two Men and a Wardrobe. Photograph: The Roman Polanski Archive

Shooting Two Men and a Wardrobe in 1958. The short follows two men as they emerge from the sea carrying the wardrobe. They totter into town, only to be abused by a gang of youths before making a retreat back to the ocean. Photograph: The Roman Polanski Archive

Polanski's debut feature Knife in the Water (1962) follows a married couple who invite a young stranger onto their boat for a sailing lesson, and was nominated for the best foreign language film Oscar. Here cinematographer Jezy Lipman, who had shot A Generation and Kanal for Andrzej Wajda, hang precariously from the side of the yacht. Photograph: The Roman Polanski Archive

Polanski and Lipman cling on to the bonnet of a car during the making of Knife in the Water. The film's producers later ordered Polanski to reshoot these scenes, replacing the Mercedes with a Peugeot to look more 'proletarian'. Photograph: The Roman Polanski Archive

Despite Knife in the Water's success, Polanski found it difficult to follow it up. Eventually he was hired to make a horror film in London, which became Repulsion (1965). Polanski cast the 20-year-old Catherine Deneuve as a troubled bedsit-dweller literally climbing the walls; here they are shown on set in the tiny Kensington flat used for the film. Photograph: The Kobal Collection

Polanski on the set of the 1967 horror-comedy The Fearless Vampire Killers, or Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are in My Neck (the second half of the title added, against the director's wishes, for its US release). Polanski co-starred with his future wife Sharon Tate, who was murdered two years later by the Manson family. Photograph: The Roman Polanski Archive (MGM)

Polanski (in tiny shorts and straw hat) filming Chinatown in the San Fernando Valley north of Los Angeles. Jack Nicholson is in the car playing Jake Gittes, the nosy private dick who uncovers a snakes' nest of sleaze during California's water wars. Photograph: The Kobal Collection

Polanski with John Huston and Jack Nicholson on the set of Chinatown. Nicholson's bandage is Polanski's doing: the director plays a thug who slits Gittes' nostrils with a pocket knife ("You're a very nosy fellow, kitty cat") in a key scene from the film. Photograph: Paramount Pictures/Photofest

In 1979 Polanski released Tess, an adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Shot largely in Brittany, it stars Nastassja Kinski (pictured with Polanski, right and Peter Firth) as the hapless young peasant girl torn between devilish Alec d'Urberville and hypocritical Angel Clare. By this time, Polanski was unable to work in the US or the UK after fleeing America before final sentencing in a sexual abuse case. Photograph: The Kobal Collection

Frantic (1988) was Polanski's homage to Hitchcock, starring Harrison Ford as a harassed surgeon whose wife is kidnapped during a trip to Paris. Here Polanski shows a stuntman how to fall when shot in the back. Photograph: The Roman Polanski Archive

Polanski and Ben Kingsley film the dramatic clifftop scene in 1994's Death and the Maiden. Another kidnap thriller, adapted from Ariel Dorfman's celebrated play, sees Sigourney Weaver take Kingsley's character hostage, convinced he blindfolded, raped and tortured her in the past. Photograph: The Kobal Collection

Polanski directing 11-year-old Barney Clark in 1995's Oliver Twist. Kingsley popped up again in the adaptation of the Dickens classic, this time as the pick-pocketing mastermind Fagin. Photograph: Columbia/Everett/Rex Features