Sorry, I had to close this. I don't want to know what any of you think about Polanski any more. It's making me pig-sick down to the bottom of my pretty feet. No mas, no mas.
The rats have swarmed into the belfry, and anything sane that survives will be hurled out to sea and stomped down like a dwarf in a shitrain. As the kids say (those lying fuckers!).
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When I first met Roman Polanski I was living with my mother and sister in the San Fernando Valley. It wasn't Ozzie and Harriet, but we had a nice family life. My mother was a working actress, and I wanted to be like her. I wanted to be famous"”a movie star. But I was really just on the edge of ceasing to be a tomboy and trying to act more like a young lady. I had a 17-year-old boyfriend who drove a Camaro, but my room was knee-deep in clothes; I had a Spider-Man poster on the wall and I kept pet rats.
My sister was dating a guy who knew Roman and introduced him to my mom, who had actually met him once before at a club. When Polanski said he'd take some pictures of me and put them in a European magazine, it was exciting. We thought it would be a good thing for my career.
On Feb. 20, 1977, Polanski took me on our first photo shoot in a hillside area just a few blocks from my house. We shot a roll of film; then he asked me to take off my shirt and took topless photos while I changed. I let him do it, but I felt self-conscious. I was thinking, "I shouldn't be doing this," but I was a kid, so I thought if it wasn't okay, he wouldn't tell me to do it. If I'd told my mom, she would never have let me go with him the second time. When he made another appointment a few weeks later, she had no reason to suspect anything. I didn't want to go, but I still thought it would be a good opportunity.
He picked me up again on March 10 at around 4 p.m. In the car he asked me if I'd ever had sex. I had, once (it was embarrassing to be a virgin among my friends), so I said yes. What I should have said is, "It's none of your business." We stopped off at Jacqueline Bisset's house, but I didn't recognize her at the time. Someone offered me a glass of wine, but I said no and went out by the pool because I didn't have anything to say to the adults. He took some shots of me wearing jeans and a white shirt tied up at the waist, but we were only there for about 15 minutes.
Then we go to Jack Nicholson's house. I had seen Chinatown and I was thinking "Wow! Jack Nicholson." The maid lets us in and disappears, so as far as I am concerned we are alone, and I'm very far from home. Polanski asks me to pose, drinking champagne. I wouldn't take the wine earlier but when he says champagne, that sounds interesting to me. He keeps refilling my glass. Then he asks me to pose topless again and says he wants to take pictures in the Jacuzzi. I don't have my bathing suit so I get in in my underwear. He takes pictures, then he gets in naked and now I'm thinking, "Oh, this is not right." I'm scared and woozy, so I tell him I have asthma and to take me home. I get out, grab a towel, but he doesn't want to take me home yet. That's when he takes out the Quaaludes and asks me if I've ever had one. I lie and say yes. I take one-third. He takes what's left and tells me to lie down for a minute. I know he wants to have sex and he is not taking no for an answer. I'm intoxicated and afraid and don't know what to do, so I just let it happen.
Then Anjelica Huston [who was Jack Nicholson's girlfriend at the time] knocked on the door. I assume she asked him, "What are you doing in my room?" I started to get dressed, but Polanski came back and said, "Lay back down," and he took off my underwear. He had been interrupted, so he finished"”briefly"”then went back to talk to her. I got dressed and went out to the car and started to cry. He took me home and said, "Don't tell your mom what happened." But my sister heard me telling my boyfriend on the phone what happened. My mom asked me if it was true, then called the police. That's when all hell broke loose.
The fallout was worse than what had happened that night. It was on the evening news every night. Reporters and photographers came to my school and put my picture in a European tabloid with the caption Little Lolita. They were all saying, "Poor Roman Polanski, entrapped by a 13-year-old temptress." I had a good friend who came from a good Catholic family, and her father wouldn't let her come to my house anymore. It was even worse for my mother because everyone was saying it was her fault. Meanwhile, I just shut down and didn't talk. I was this sweet 13-year-old girl, and then all of a sudden I turned into this pissed-off 14-year-old. I was mad at my attorney; I was mad at my mom. I never blamed her for what happened, but I was mad that she had called the police and that we had to go through this ordeal. Now I realize she went through hell trying to handle things as best she could.
What I did with my life over the next five years was self-destructive. I had been heading in a positive direction before that, going on auditions, getting into commercials. But I never really got back on course. You can't be a movie actress and have this kind of secret. If I had pursued acting, it would have all come back and slapped me in the face again. So I became a rebellious teenager. I left school at 16 and hung out with a group of wilder kids. I was pregnant at 18 and married at 19.
- Samantha Geimer