Charlotte Lewis (born 7 August 1967) is an English actress.

Early life

Lewis attended Bishop Douglass School in

Finchley Finchley () is a large district of north London, England, in the London Borough of Barnet. Finchley is on high ground, north of Charing Cross. Nearby districts include: Golders Green, Muswell Hill, Friern Barnet, Whetstone, Mill Hill a ...

. Her mother is Irish-English, while her father—a doctor whom she never met—is half-Chilean and half-Iraqi.

Career

Lewis made her film debut as a teenager in the 1986

Roman Polanski Raymond Roman Thierry Polański , group=lower-alpha, name=note_a ( né Liebling; 18 August 1933) is a French-Polish film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. He is the recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, tw ...

film ''

Pirates Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and other valuable goods. Those who conduct acts of piracy are called pirates, v ...

''. She followed it that same year with the female lead in '' The Golden Child'' alongside

Eddie Murphy Edward Regan Murphy (born April 3, 1961) is an American actor, comedian, writer, producer, and singer. He rose to fame on the sketch comedy show ''Saturday Night Live'', for which he was a regular cast member from 1980 to 1984. Murphy has als ...

.Angeli, Michael. "Brit Force". ''Playboy''. ''40'' (7) pp. 132–140. July 1993. . Later appearances include the film ''

Tripwire A tripwire is a passive triggering mechanism. Typically, a wire or cord is attached to a device for detecting or reacting to physical movement. Military applications Such tripwires may be attached to one or more mines – especially fragme ...

'' (1990) and '' Storyville'' (1992, opposite

James Spader James Todd Spader (born February 7, 1960) is an American actor. He has portrayed eccentric characters in films such as the drama ''Sex, Lies, and Videotape'' (1989) for which he won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor, the action scienc ...

). She had a co-starring role in ''

Men of War ''Men of War'' is a real-time tactics video game franchise, based mainly in World War II. Main series Soldiers: Heroes of World War II ''Soldiers: Heroes of World War II'' is the original game of the 'Men of War' series, and uses an early GE ...

'' (1995, alongside

Dolph Lundgren Hans Lundgren (, ; born 3 November 1957), better known as Dolph Lundgren, is a Swedish actor, filmmaker and martial artist. His breakthrough came in 1985, when he starred in '' Rocky IV'' as the imposing Soviet boxer Ivan Drago. Since then, Lu ...

) and in the 1995 film ''

Decoy A decoy (derived from the Dutch ''de'' ''kooi'', literally "the cage" or possibly ''ende kooi'', " duck cage") is usually a person, device, or event which resembles what an individual or a group might be looking for, but it is only meant to lu ...

''. Lewis appeared in the 2003 film '' Hey DJ''. Lewis also appeared in a cover-featured pictorial in the July 1993 issue of ''

Playboy ''Playboy'' is an American men's Lifestyle magazine, lifestyle and entertainment magazine, formerly in print and currently online. It was founded in Chicago in 1953, by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from H ...

'' magazine. Lewis acted in the 2019 film '' Lost Angelas'' playing Angie Malone, one of the title roles.

Accusation against Roman Polanski

On 14 May 2010, Lewis and her Los Angeles-based attorney

Gloria Allred Gloria Rachel Allred ( Bloom; born July 3, 1941) is an American attorney known for taking high-profile and often controversial cases, particularly those involving the protection of women's rights. She has been inducted into the National Women's ...

accused

of sexually assaulting the actress when she was 16 years old, while the two worked together on ''

''. Prosecutors in Los Angeles confirmed that they interviewed Lewis in connection with the allegations. According to Lewis, the alleged incident occurred at Polanski's Paris apartment in 1983. In 2010, an article called into question Lewis' testimony by referencing an account of events she gave in an interview with the UK's ''

News of the World The ''News of the World'' was a weekly national red top tabloid newspaper published every Sunday in the United Kingdom from 1843 to 2011. It was at one time the world's highest-selling English-language newspaper, and at closure still had one ...

,'' in which she had spoken of a relationship with Polanski, along with several other actors. Later, in December 2019, French magazine '' L’Obs'' came back to the ''News of the World'' story, relating a "violent campaign to discredit her" in the media. Charlotte Lewis said: "I was completely alone in 2010. No one believed me. They said I was a prostitute, a liar. I'm a little anxious to talk. The media got me so depressed."

Filmography

Film

Television

References

External links

* * * * Living people 1967 births 20th-century English actresses 21st-century English actresses Actresses from London British actors of Latin American descent English film actresses English people of Chilean descent English people of Iraqi descent English people of Irish descent English television actresses People from Kensington {{UK-screen-actor-stub