by ANTHONY BREZNICAN, AP Entertainment Writer
LOS ANGELES - Fugitive filmmaker Roman Polanski is up for an Oscar, but don't expect to see him on the red carpet.
Nearly 25 years after fleeing Los Angeles for Paris to escape sentencing for having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl, Polanski received an Academy Award nomination Tuesday for directing the Holocaust survival story The Pianist.
While the nomination suggests Hollywood is welcoming the 69-year-old filmmaker, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office said Polanski will be arrested if he enters the United States.
"He's a convicted felon and a fugitive, and that's not going to go away," District Attorney spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons said. "You don't get a pass for longevity."
Polanski, the director of Rosemary's Baby and Chinatown, was charged with rape and five other felonies in 1977 after having intercourse with the girl at Jack Nicholson's home while the actor was away.
The other charges were dropped when Polanski pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, but the director fled the country in 1978 before being sentenced.
In the mid-1980s, he reportedly reached an out-of-court settlement with his victim, who has said she does not object to his return, in part because she hopes it would lessen public interest in her and the case.
Gibbons said it's up to Polanski and his representatives to work out an arrangement with the court, although she said there have been no recent negotiations.
Previously, she said, Polanski's lawyers have pushed for a sentence involving no long-term incarceration.
"He may want that, but I don't know how he would get it," Gibbons said.
Indeterminate sentencing laws at the time mean he could face between one year and 50 years, she said.
Polanski's representatives did not return calls for comment.
Although he once vowed to resolve the case, Polanski has said in recent years he's unwilling to jeopardize his life with his children and wife, French actress Emmanuelle Seigner.
"I can't think for myself alone anymore. Now I have to consider my family," he said in 1994.
Polanski has three previous Oscar nominations: for adapted screenplay for 1968's Rosemary's Baby, for directing 1974's Chinatown, and for directing 1979's Tess, an adaptation of the Thomas Hardy novel "Tess of the d'Urbervilles," about a young peasant woman whose life collapses after she is seduced by a wealthy older man.
In addition to the Oscar bid, Polanski has a Directors Guild nomination for The Pianist, based on the true story of a classical musician hiding from Nazis in the ruins of Poland during World War II.
The story echoes elements of Polanski's real life: He escaped from Krakow's Jewish ghetto as a child and lived off the charity of strangers until reuniting with his father years later. His mother died at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Polanski's life was marked by further horror in 1969, when his pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate, and four guests were savagely murdered in his home by followers of Charles Manson. Polanski was away on business at the time.
© 2003 Associated Press
