Roman Polanski, the film director, is asking that the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts (the Oscars) allow him to plead his case for reinstatement having been tossed out along with Bill Crosby over sexual misconduct. He fled the US in 1977 while awaiting sentencing for the statutory rape of a 13 year old.
Polanski was born 18 August 1933 10.30am in Paris, France and moved to Krakow in Poland when he was 3 and was forced into the Jewish ghetto when he was six at which point he saw a woman shot in front of him by Nazis. Before he was 10, his parents were both sent off to concentration camps where his mother died. He went into hiding; spent some time with a Roman Catholic family; and at other times roamed wild in the countryside where he was shot at. 90% of the Polish Jewish population was killed during the war. After the war his father returned and he had to readjust to living among people and start his education.
His earliest experiences were of constant fear, horror, unimaginable loss, loneliness and the need to survive in a dangerous world.
He has an 11th house Leo Sun but what dominates his chart is Mars in Libra opposition Uranus in Aries squaring onto a 10th house Moon Pluto in Cancer. Mars Pluto and Mars Uranus point to the brutality and extreme risk of his childhood, which he used to effect in his movies. Pluto in the 10th has several meanings but the central one is an overwhelming need to be in control as a defence against a world that is trying to smother, suffocate and destroy him. That is doubled up emotionally with his Moon being conjunct Pluto.
Without generalising too much, adult men who opt for very young or underage partners, have a tremendous fear of mature women and a need to dominate. Years ago I looked over several paedophile charts and several had Pluto in the 10th, which in normal circumstances indicates a mother who is possessive and controlling to a degree that the child is frightened of not being able to breathe and certainly feels they have no choices. A child ‘sexual partner’ will not pose the same dangers for them – though clearly it inflicts lifelong damage on the child. Either they lack empathy to a degree where they don’t understand how destructive their actions are; or they have a warped sense of their own emotional age, having been stunted in psychological development. And some will act out what was done to them (at least at a feeling level) as a kind of repetition compulsion. Treatment usually demands they are able to re-experience their own feelings of utter helplessness, shame and terror before they understand what they have inflicted on the child they attack sexually. But that rarely happens since the feelings are so corrosive, the process threatens psychic implosion.
Polanski’s background has always posed a moral dilemma, since it’s a miracle he survived his childhood to function at all, let alone as a well-adjusted human being. Not that his history or his talent excuses his behaviour. But there’s something gothic about his life. His wife, Sharon Tate, whom he married when she was 24 and he ten years older, was murdered brutally when pregnant by the Manson cult members in 1969. It must have felt his childhood was replaying itself with his mother being sent to her death in Auschwitz. His sexual assault came 8 years after that in 1977. In 1989, he remarried to Emmanuelle Seigneur, 33 years his junior, who was 23 then and they have two children. She has a Leo Moon conjunct his Sun and a Sun Jupiter in Cancer – with an affectionate though controlling relationship chart.
I doubt Polanski is remotely a’nice’ human being. Bad things don’t always turn out good people. But important to struggle with the paradox of responsibility for choices. Not all simple and straightforward. His background isn’t an excuse but it may be part of the explanation.
No one is excusing him Clare but the reality is at six years old he was left on his own to survive, and he is a victim of the Nazi’s.
He had a horrific childhood, yes. He also has never shown one shred of remorse for drugging and sodomising a 13 year old child, and has publicly stated that he thinks that everyone wants to have sex with teenage girls.
An horrendous childhood to be sure.
But Nobel Prize winning author Elie Wiesel was deported to Auschwitz (along with family members. His mother and youngest sister died there). Then was deported to Buchenwald, along with his father, in 1945.
Doubtless he saw hundreds of people murdered, maybe even thousands, but he never raped a child like Polanski.
Yes we can all say Polanski had an horrific childhood, and he did, but that does not excuse the fact he raped a child.
Elie Wiesel any many others are testament to that.
Are you suggesting that other imprisoned Jews are above what was done? can you compare your childhood to what happened to a 6 yr old in a death camp? Perhaps he’d become so numb from events that there remains no remorse inside his core? I can feel compassion…but is there a black and white answer for what he’d done – as an adult – to another child?
I have in the past been very critical of Polanski and criticised actors for being willing to work with him, however reading all you have said about his life I find myself aghast at his suffering and sorry that I judged him so harshly. His own life will no doubt be made into a film one day, a story that will be hard for people to take in.
What a terrible childhood and then followed by the murder of his wife in such horrible circumstances – how can it not have affected him. It never ceases to amaze me how some people are almost ‘cursed’ by their astrology
Polanski born three days before south node solar eclipse 28 Leo — same position (minus one degree) as eclipse August 2017. Also: Uranus return in past year. Two indications of conditions favorable to overturning some aspects of the past.
Solar return 1939 shows a disruptive year with big impacts on emotional / mental levels, affecting social development: SR Moon conjunct natal ascendant, SR Mars exactly square natal Mars and close opposition natal Moon-Pluto, SR Uranus square natal Sun, SR Neptune closing in on natal Venus – Jupiter in twelve (Venus ruling rising sign Libra), SR Mercury (retro) exactly opposite natal Saturn.
That kid was marked.
Interesting too that remarriage year 1989 also had Sun conjunct south node — actually a total lunar eclipse the day before.
I read long ago that his chart was a 12th house Pluto–seeing the dark side of life, quite a lot of it. The chart I read then made more sense than this one.
Astro com says off birth certificate. So AA rated.
Yes he had a horrible childhood. I am not sure many people nowadays realise that.
Some interesting yet horrifying insights into the life of this man, Marjorie. Many, many thanks.