Factbox: Who is Roman Polanski?

Switzerland has decided not to extradite film director Roman Polanski to the United States to face sentencing for having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977.

Here are some facts about Polanski's life and times and the court case:

Early life:
* Born Raymond Polanski to Polish-Jewish parents on Aug 18, 1933, he spent the first three years of his life in Paris before the family returned to Poland. He has dual French-Polish nationality.

* During World War Two when the Germans sealed off the Jewish ghetto in Krakow, his father shouted to Roman to run and he escaped. His mother later died at Auschwitz.


Glittering film career:
* Polanski's first full-length feature film, Knife in the Water in 1962, won awards and was his ticket to Hollywood.

* Few directors have laid bare their inner fantasies and fears like Polanski in films such as Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby and The Tenant -- works of disturbing brutality shot through with voyeurism and dark humour.

* In 1974 Polanski had another major Hollywood success with Chinatown, a stylish thriller starring Jack Nicholson.

* Polanski won a best director Oscar for his 2002 Holocaust film The Pianist, as well as the Cannes film festival's Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) that same year.

* Harrison Ford, who was presenting the Oscar, accepted it on Polanski's behalf because the director could not travel to Los Angeles because of the criminal proceedings. The audience gave Polanski a standing ovation.

* He completed his latest film The Ghost Writer, based on a Robert Harris best-seller, while under arrest in Switzerland.

Life details and the case:
* In August 1969, Polanski's pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate, and four others, were murdered by followers of cult leader Charles Manson at the director's Los Angeles home.

* In 1977 he pleaded guilty in Los Angeles to a charge of unlawful sex with a 13 year-old girl. He served 42 days in prison on psychiatric assessment but later skipped bail and fled to France in 1978 before being sentenced.

* Polanski has lived in Europe ever since, facing the prospect of arrest the moment he set foot back on US soil while continuing his film career outside Hollywood.

* He dated actress Nastassja Kinski, then age 15, for several years and cast her in his 1979 movie Tess.

* He is married to French actress Emmanuelle Seigner, with whom he has two children.

* Polanski was arrested on a US warrant in September 2009 in Switzerland upon arrival in Zurich to receive a lifetime achievement award at a film festival. After a short jail stint, Polanski was transferred to house arrest in his Gstaad villa in December 2009 pending extradition.

* In March lawyers for Polanski filed an appeal demanding he be sentenced in absence from California while he remained under house arrest in Switzerland.

* A California appellate court on April 22 upheld the January decision by a Los Angeles judge, saying Polanski could not be sentenced in absentia.