THIS 'Matrix' actor is facing backlash for backing Roman Polanski

Lambert Wilson, a french actor who played  Merovingian in "The Matrix" is facing backlash for speaking in favour of Roman Polanski.

Protesters booed Wilsom who has condemned attacks on the controversial film director Roman Polanski as an "abominable public lynching" as he performed onstage.

The group whistled and shouted slogans as actor Lambert Wilson, who plays Merovingian in "The Matrix" films, gave a concert of Kurt Weill songs in the northern French city of Lille late Wednesday.

"Polanski rapes and Wilson endorses it!" they shouted after the actor criticised actress Adele Haenel for walking out of the "French Oscars", the Cesars, on Saturday after Polanski won best director.

Wilson turned on Haenel and "the miniscules" hounding Polanski while he was promoting a new biopic of Charles de Gaulle in which he plays the French wartime leader.

Haenel was subject to an ugly attack on Facebook earlier this week from the French casting director of Quentin Tarantino´s "Inglourious Basterds".

Olivier Carbone said she and her supporters were "fat whores who behaved like hyenas with Polanski", before later amending his post to drop the "w" word.

Polanski, wanted in the United States since 1978 for the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl, sparked fury when he got 12 nominations for his historical drama "An Officer and a Spy".

A call for a boycott of the movie did not stop it becoming a box office hit in France after it won two of the top prizes at the Venice film festival last September.

Haenel, who shook the French film industry last year by accusing the director of her first film, Christophe Ruggia, of sexually harassing her when she was only 12, stormed out of the Cesars ceremony when Polanski won the third of the three awards for his movie about the Dreyfus affair.