A list of actors to avoid

There is a petition circulating that asks that convicted child rapist Roman Polanski be set free. Polanski invited a 13 year old girl to Jack Nicholson's home for a "photo shoot". He proceeded to give her Quaaludes and Champaign and when she was liquored up, he anally raped her. She and her family brought charges, Polanski admitted the rape but when it seemed that the Judge might actually sentence him, he broke bail and fled to France (no extradition treaty with the USA). It was found that he was traveling to Switzerland to accept an award. Switzerland does have an extradition treaty with the USA so he was arrested by the Swiss police. This article at The Guardian lists some of the petitions signers:

Release Polanski, demands petition by film industry luminaries
Woody Allen, David Lynch and Martin Scorsese today added their names to a petition demanding the immediate release of Roman Polanski from detention in Zurich. The director was arrested on Saturday over a three-decade-old underage sex case when he arrived to receive a lifetime achievement award at the city's film festival.

"Film-makers in France, in Europe, in the United States and around the world are dismayed by this decision," says the petition, which is co-ordinated by the Soci�t� des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques (SACD), a film industry organisation which also represents performance and visual artists.

"It seems inadmissible to them that an international cultural event, paying homage to one of the greatest contemporary film-makers, is used by police to apprehend him," it adds.

The petition has now been signed by more than 70 film industry luminaries, including Polanski's fellow directors Michael Mann, Wim Wenders, Pedro Almod�var, Darren Aronofsky, Terry Gilliam, Julian Schnabel, the Dardenne brothers, Alejandro Gonz�lez I��rritu, Wong Kar-Wai, Walter Salles and Jonathan Demme. Actors Tilda Swinton, Monica Bellucci and Asia Argento, as well as producer Harvey Weinstein, have also put their names on the petition. Yesterday, Weinstein stated he was "calling on every film-maker we can to help fix this terrible situation".

I stopped going to see Woody Allen flics after he started his sleeping with his adopted daughter (34 year age difference -- he adopted her as his daughter when she was seven). As Woody's natural born son says:

Allen and Farrow's only biological son, Ronan Seamus Farrow, said of Allen: "He's my father married to my sister. That makes me his son and his brother-in-law. That is such a moral transgression. I cannot see him. I cannot have a relationship with my father and be morally consistent.... I lived with all these adopted children, so they are my family. To say Soon-Yi was not my sister is an insult to all adopted children."

There are some names that I will miss -- Terry Gilliam for one, Tilda Swinton another. Most of the names are people I don't normally go out of my way to see anyway so no big loss. Polanski needs to serve his time for the crime he committed. End of story. Hat tip to the always excellent Maggie's Farm for the link.