Polanski was born in Paris of Polish-Jewish origin. His parents returned to Poland 2 years before the outbreak of war, when he was 3, and were subsequently thrown into concentration camps, where his mother died. Polanski managed to escape from the Krakow ghetto and somehow survived.In the 1950s, Polanski entered Lodz film school, where his early shorts, such as Two Men and a Wardrobe (1958), prefigured his characteristic taste for black humour and bizarre human relationships. His first feature, Knife in the Water (1962), was grudgingly received in Communist Poland, but earned great acclaim internationally, receiving the Critics' Prize at the Venice Film Festival and an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.
Moving to Paris and then to the UK, Polanski made 2 award-winning films, Repulsion (1965), a study of psychotic breakdown and murder, and the bizarre Cul-de-Sac (1966). His next work, Dance of the Vampires (1967), a horror film parody that has gained cult status, co-starred himself and his future wife, Sharon Tate.
In 1968, Polanski went to Hollywood, where he established himself as one of the world's most compelling film makers with the Satanic horror classic Rosemary's Baby. But in 1969, Sharon Tate and 3 others were murdered at Polanski's house in horrifying circumstances by crazed adherents of the Charles Manson cult. Polanski returned to Europe, where he made an extraordinary version of Macbeth (1971), co-writing the film script with critic Kenneth Tynan. In 1974, he returned to Hollywood and made another classic, Chinatown, a detective thriller set in 1940s' Los Angeles and starring Jack Nicholson. Considered by many critics to be his finest film, this received 11 Academy Award nominations and an Award for Best Original Screenplay.
In 1979, Polanski fled the United States after being charged with having sexual intercourse with an under-age girl, and has never returned. He had already ceased to work in the United States, settling in Paris, where in 1979 he made another acclaimed film, Tess, based on Hardy's novel. For this he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Director.
Thereafter, however, his output has been intermittent. Noteworthy films include Frantic (1988), Death and the Maiden (1994) and Bitter Moon (1994).
In 2000, it was announced that Polanski would be directing the Holocaust drama The Pianist, by concentration camp survivor Wladyslaw Szpilman. Polanski had previously turned down an offer to direct another Holocaust film, Schindler's List (finally directed by Steven Spielberg), because it featured the Krakow camp where his mother had been murdered.
