Facts about film director Roman Polanski

A Los Angeles judge on Friday rejected a request by fugitive film director Roman Polanski to be sentenced in absentia for having sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977.

Here are some facts about Polanski's life and career:

* Born Raymond Polanski to Polish-Jewish parents on August 18, 1933, he spent the first three years of his life in Paris before the family returned to Poland.

* 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.

* He has dual French-Polish nationality.

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

* 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 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.

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

* Polanski won a best director Oscar for his 2002 Holocaust film The Pianist, but did not return to Los Angeles to collect it.

* Polanski also directed such classics as Chinatown, which earned 11 Oscar nominations, Repulsion, and Rosemary's Baby.

* He married French actress Emmanuelle Seigner in 1989, with whom he has two children.

* Polanski was arrested on a US warrant in September 2009 in Switzerland and transferred to house arrest in his Gstaad villa in December 2009 pending extradition.