UPDATE 2-FACTBOX-Key facts on director Roman Polanski

(Adds detail on Oscars, movies, wife in final 3 paragraphs)

Sept 27 (Reuters) - Roman Polanski, Oscar-winning director of "The Pianist," was arrested at the request of U.S. officials when trying to enter Switzerland to receive a prize from the Zurich Film Festival.

Polanski's arrest on Saturday night was on a 1978 warrant issued by Los Angeles authorities for unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl. The victim, Samantha Geimer, who now lives in Hawaii, has said Polanski should not serve any more time in prison.

Here are some key facts about Polanski and the case:

* Born Raymond Polanski to Polish-Jewish parents on August 18, 1933, he spent the first three years of his life in Paris before the family returned to Poland.

* In World War Two when the Germans sealed off the Jewish ghetto in Krakow in 1940, his father shouted to Roman to run and he escaped. His mother later died in an Auschwitz gas chamber.

* His first full-length feature film after graduation, "Knife in the Water," won a number of awards and, most important for Polanski, was his ticket to Hollywood movies.

* In August 1969, Polanski's wife, actress Sharon Tate, and six others, were hacked to death by followers of cult leader Charles Manson at his Hollywood home in a random attack.

* Polanski is wanted in the United States after pleading guilty in 1977 to having sex with the 13-year-old girl in the home of actor Jack Nicholson. Under his plea agreement, Polanski would have been sentenced to the 42 days he had already served in jail under psychiatric evaluation.

* But Polanski believed the judge, who has since died, might alter the plea agreement and require him to spend years in jail, so he skipped bail in 1978 and fled to France before the sentence was pronounced.

* A 2008 documentary film, "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired" looked at the case in detail. It included interviews with Geimer and lawyers involved in the case. Also in 2008, Polanski's lawyers sought to have the case dismissed based on an idea advanced in the film that there had been prosecutorial and judicial misconduct 30 years earlier.

* In an interview to promote the film, Geimer told Reuters, "I don't think he's a danger to society" and "I don't think he needs to be locked up forever, and no one has ever come out, ever, besides me and accused him of anything."

* Earlier this year, Polanski's attorneys lost their bid for a dismissal when Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza ruled their legal motion "discloses no legal grounds for disqualification" of the original case.

* Polanski won a best director Oscar for his 2002 Holocaust film "The Pianist," as well as the Cannes film festival's Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) that same year.

* Harrison Ford, who was presenting the Oscar, accepted it on Polanski's behalf because the director could not travel to Los Angeles due to the criminal charge. The audience gave Polanski a standing ovation, and Ford later handed over the golden statuette to Polanski in September at a film festival in Deauville, France.

* Polanski also directed such film classics as "Chinatown," which earned 11 Oscar nominations, "Repulsion," "Tess," and "Rosemary's Baby."

* He is married to French actress Emmanuelle Seigner, with whom he has two children. (Additional reporting by Bob Tourtellotte in Los Angeles; Editing by Chris Wilson)