Let him alone already!
Hollywood’s heaviest hitters have launched a full-throttled campaign for the freedom of former fugitive director Roman Polanski after he was abruptly nabbed in Switzerland over the weekend after more than 30, very public years on the lam.
Decrying US prosecutors’ alleged vendetta against Polanski over his sex romp with a 13-year-old girl in 1977, everyone from Martin Scorsese to Jonathan Demme to Salman Rushdie has signed on to a flurry of petitions demanding his release.
Joining their discontented ranks is Woody Allen — who, at 56, started an affair with then-girlfriend Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, when she was 21. The May-December pair later married.
Also signing onto the free-Polanski movement are moviemakers David Lynch, Michael Mann, Darren Aronofsky and Terry Gilliam, who lent their names to a petition by the Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques, a French film industry group.
Actress Monica Bellucci and powerful producer Harvey Weinstein have signed the French petition, too.
Weinstein yesterday said he’s “calling on every filmmaker we can to help fix this terrible situation.”
Director Mike Nichols, actress Tilda Swinton and fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg have signed another petition demanding Polanski’s freedom.
Polanski’s backers have noted that the famed director only fled the United States because he believed that the judge — in conjunction with prosecutors — was about to renege on a deal that was supposed to free him.
His victim, Samantha Geimer, has publicly said she forgave him years ago — and now even she thinks he’s a victim, a relative said.
“She feels bad for him,” Adam Geimer, Samantha’s cousin, told The Post from Los Angeles yesterday. “They could have arrested him at any time. I think they should just drop it.”
The “Chinatown” director, 76, was picked up on a provisional US arrest warrant Saturday in Zurich, and authorities want to extradite him to face the old rape charge.
Polanski pleaded guilty in 1978 to having unlawful sex with the 13-year-old girl in Los Angeles and shortly after fled to France, where he is a citizen. The French have only a limited extradition agreement with the United States.
When Polanski asked in absentia for his conviction to be set aside late last year, an LA judge refused — but conceded the moviemaker was the victim of “substantial misconduct.”
Polanski yesterday asked a Swiss court to release him under house arrest to his Swiss chalet.
A court rep said “the decision will be made within the next weeks.”
Additional reporting by Tori Richards in Los Angeles and Post Wires