Emmanuelle Seigner, married to Roman Polanski, has declined an invitation to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
The two-time César Award-nominated actor has written an open letter to the awards body behind the Oscars, calling out the ”insufferable hypocrisy” of the organisation expelling Polanski despite awarding him Best Director for The Pianist.
Polanski, who still awaits sentencing in the US for statutory rape after admitting to having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old in 1977, was kicked out of the Academy earlier this year in the wake of the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements. The director called the expulsion ”the height of hypocrisy”.
Seigner was one of 928 artists invited to join the group earlier this year, many of the appointments made in an attempt to boost diversity. Writing in France’s Le Journal du Dimanche, she said: “I have always been a feminist. But how can I ignore the fact that a few weeks ago the Academy expelled my husband, Roman Polanski, in an attempt to appease the zeitgeist – the very same Academy which in 2002 awarded him an Oscar for The Pianist! A curious case of amnesia!
“The Academy probably thinks I am enough of a spineless, social climbing actress that I would forget that I have been married for the past 29 years to one of the world’s greatest directors. I love him, he is my husband and the father of my children. He has been cast out like a paria
The French actor, best known for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, continued by calling the members “nameless academicians” whose proposal “is one insult too many”. She then laments the coverage of Polanski’s case, concluding: “As for the members of the Academy, I have only one thing to say to them: this is one woman you won’t have.”
Meanwhile, Polanski has begun the process of suing the Academy, the 84-year-old’s lawyers saying the group did not abide by their own rules by not giving the director the opportunity to defend himself.
