Roman Polanski, Hollywood’s favorite pedophile, has been nabbed.

Director Roman Polanski was arrested by Swiss police as he flew in for the Zurich Film Festival and faces possible extradition to the United States for having sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977, authorities said Sunday.

Polanski was scheduled to receive an honorary award at the festival when he was apprehended Saturday at the airport, the Swiss Justice Ministry said in a statement. It said U.S. authorities have sought the arrest of the 76-year-old director around the world since 2005.

“There was a valid arrest request and we knew when he was coming,” ministry spokesman Guido Balmer told The Associated Press. “That’s why he was taken into custody.”

Polanski, the director of such classic films as “Chinatown” and “Rosemary’s Baby,” fled the U.S. for France in 1978, a year after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with the underage girl.

Polanski has asked a U.S. appeals court in California to overturn a judges’ refusal to throw out his case. He claims misconduct by the now-deceased judge who had arranged a plea bargain and then reneged on it.

Sniff, sniff. In American today, Polanski would never get a plea deal for feeding a 13-year old girl drugs and wine, then sodomizing her. He’s bitching because the judge went back on a 42 day term for rape.

In Paris, Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand said that he was in contact with French President Nicolas Sarkozy “who is following the case with great attention and shares the minister’s hope that the situation can be quickly resolved.”

Mitterrand added that he was “dumbfounded” by Polanski’s arrest, adding that he “strongly regrets that a new ordeal is being inflicted on someone who has already experienced so many of them.”

Yes, he lost his parents in the Holocaust and his wife to the Manson family. That doesn’t excuse a man in his 40s from inflicting pain on a child.

If you have any sympathy for Polanski, read this transcript.