French actress Emmanuelle Seigner, who is married to director Roman Polanski, turned down an invitation to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Sunday. Seigner is one of 928 film personalities who was invited in June to be a member of the Academy, which organises the Oscars every year.
“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!” Seigner said in a column headlined “Non merci!” and published in the French weekly newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche.
Polanski was expelled in May after the Academy created a code of conduct in response to allegations of sexual harassment and assault in Hollywood. The 84-year-old director continues to face possible prosecution for a case dating back to 1977, in which he admitted to having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl.
Seigner criticised what she termed “insufferable hypocrisy” in her column. “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,” wrote Seigner, who has previously worked in Polanski’s Frantic (1988), Bitter Moon (1992) and Venus in Fur (2013). “As for the members of the Academy, I have only one thing to say to them: this is one woman you won’t have.”