Oscar-winning filmmaker Roman Polanski has been arrested in Switzerland on a decades-old arrest warrant stemming from a sex charge in California, Swiss police said Sunday.

Polanski, 76, was taken into custody trying to enter Switzerland on Saturday, Zurich police said. A spokesman for the Swiss Justice Ministry said Polanski was arrested upon arrival at the airport.

He has lived in France for decades to avoid being arrested if he enters the United States and declined to appear in person to collect his Academy Award for Best Director for “The Pianist” in 2003.

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Like they did everything else through 34 years of marriage, Patrick Swayze and wife Lisa Niemi battled his struggle with pancreatic cancer the only way they knew how: side by side. “I would be happy if he’s around for a long time, and I am being whatever I need to be to help him do that,” she told PEOPLE in April. But after a Stage IV diagnosis in February 2008, the risk-taking actor – who told Barbara Walters he had lived “159 lives” – finally died on Sept. 14 at the age of 57.

“Dirty Dancing just blew the lid off my career,” Swayze (with costar Jennifer Grey) told PEOPLE in 2007 about starring as hip-swiveling dance instructor Johnny Castle in the 1987 box-office smash. The iconic film – which grossed $170 million worldwide – made him a bona fide heartthrob to all ages. “I constantly have some old lady pinching me on the rear,” he said. “I turn around and see blue hair running back to a group of other blue hairs going, ‘I did it, Martha! I pinched him!’”

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Patrick Swayze was a big softie. With performances in nearly three dozen movies in more than three decades, that was the secret behind his best work: his ability to convey, even when he was playing a tough guy, that beneath the glower his character was actually kind, sensitive and maybe even hurting.

His two most memorable roles, in 1987′s Dirty Dancing and 1990′s Ghost, both showcased his caring side. They were also his biggest box-office successes.

In Dancing, he made hearts flutter as a sexy, supportive dance instructor who, via the mambo and cha-cha, helps transform a teenage wallflower (Jennifer Grey) into a self-confident woman. In Ghost, he played an apparition who returns from the dead to protect his widow (Demi Moore) from harm. In the love story’s most memorable scene, a ghostly Swayze helped Moore turn throwing pottery on a wheel into a near X-rated activity. (more…)