In “The Girl,” written with her lawyer Lawrence Silver and Judith Newman, Geimer presents the events with an immediacy that effectively contradicts Polanski’s subsequent claim that the sex was consensual.
Like every other teenager in Southern California in 1977, 13-year-old Samantha Geimer was an aspiring actress.
She ultimately did become famous, but only as “The Girl” raped by Roman Polanski in one of the biggest scandals in the history of Hollywood.
Polanski is now 80 and Geimer is 50. He has lived in exile in Europe since 1978, fleeing there after being threatened with additional jail time when he pleaded guilty to sex with a minor. The reduced charge was the result of a plea bargain deal in part brokered by Geimer’s family to spare her the pain of testifying in open court.
In “The Girl,” written with her lawyer Lawrence Silver and Judith Newman, Geimer presents the events with an immediacy that effectively contradicts Polanski’s subsequent claim that the sex was consensual.
“I was by all accounts, including my own, a very pleasant but unexceptional-looking girl,” the wife and mother writes of her teenage self.
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Her mother, who also had acting ambitions, had transplanted Samantha and her older sister, Kim, from York, Pa., the factory town where the girls grew up. Samantha had already been auditioning for roles in New York, and in Los Angeles “being an actor seems like a perfectly reasonable career goal.”
Polanski was introduced to the family through a producer friend of her sister. The producer said the “Chinatown” director was looking for girls to model for a spread in Vogue Paris. It was clearly an opportunity, and one her mother readily agreed to.
What Samantha didn’t tell her mother was that on the first day’s shoot on a hill near her home, Polanski persuaded her to take her blouse off. The girl thought of Brooke Shields (“Pretty Baby”) and Jodie Foster (“Taxi Driver”) and agreed.
It seemed truly possible that the call back to be photographed by Polanski again might be Samantha’s big break.
The director picked her up for the afternoon shoot, first stopping at Jacqueline Bisset’s house, where remarkably the actress offered the 13-year-old a glass of wine. She refused.
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At Jack Nicholson’s home on Mulholland Drive, Polanski opened a bottle of champagne and told the teen to sip it as he shot photos. He then pressed her to gulp a third of a Quaalude. Next, he directed her into the Jacuzzi. With no bathing suit at hand, she jumped in in her panties.
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