Adam Sandler has joined the ranks of Jewish actors with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Mr Sandler, whose hits include The Wedding Singer and Big Daddy, has become the 2,341st person to be honoured on the famous Beverley Hills boulevard.

At the ceremony the actor, 44, praised his two daughters for always making him feel like he was good at things.

He said: “Even when I was terrible at things made me brim with confidence.

"This is a big deal. I can't believe this has happened in my life."

When the Swiss Justice Ministry rejected an extradition request from the United States for Polanski last summer, it was just the latest chapter in a story every bit as dramatic and complex as one of the director’s films.

Born Raimund Liebling in Paris, Polanski survived the Holocaust by escaping from the Krakow ghetto, although his mother was killed in Auschwitz.

After the war he worked his way up in the Polish film world, moving to Hollywood in the 1960s and going on to make Oscar-winning classics including Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown, and The Pianist.

Natalie Portman’s performance as a tortured and competitive prima ballerina earned her another film award last night, as the Screen Actors Guild named her Outstanding Female Actress.

The Jerusalem-born actress, who has already picked up a Golden Globe for her star turn in Black Swan, has been critically acclaimed and is expected to win her first Academy Award next month.

She was previously up for the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for the film Closer in 2005, but lost out to Cate Blanchett.

An Israeli filmmaker has allegedly received death threats after a film she made about Israeli soldiers was aired on Channel 4 last night.

Nurit Kedar told Channel 4 News she had received threatening messages on the internet and her mobile.

The special report showed clips from Ms Kedar’s film, Concrete, where she interviewed IDF soldiers who had taken part in Operation Cast Lead in late 2008.

Ms Kedar told Channel 4 News: “I have had phone calls saying 'you should be hanged' and calling me a traitor.

"You can’t boycott an entire nation."

The Coen Brothers remake of the Western classic True Grit has been nominated for 10 Oscars.

The Jewish directing duo Joel and Ethan are up for the Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Director awards.

They were last nominated for the awards in 2009 for A Serious Man, and have won Oscars for their films Fargo and No Country for Old Men.

The film’s young star, Hailee Steinfeld, who has a Jewish father, was named in Best Supporting Actress category.

Jewish comedian Sacha Baron Cohen is to take on perhaps his most controversial role yet.

Having played the fast-talking Ali G, the Kazakhstani businessman Borat and the fashionista Bruno, he will now play Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Mr Baron Cohen, who was just eight years old when Saddam took control of Iraq, will be the star of a Hollywood love story about an Iraqi leader’s illicit affair with a poor subject trapped in an unhappy marriage.

The brilliant director Darren Aranofsky first came to notice with a low-budget independent film called Pi about a paranoid mathematical genius pursued by Chasidic numerologists. But it was with the terrific, eye-poppingly inventive but harrowing drugs film Requiem for a Dream that he made his reputation.

Since then, Aranofsky's work has ranged from the slated science fiction effort The Fountain to The Wrestler which won a Best Actor Oscar for Mickey Rourke.

The glitz and glamour of events like the Oscars make the film industry look like a one-way street to fame and fortune. But do not be fooled, warns Canada's most successful movie producer, Robert Lantos. "I think anybody who chooses to make films for money is out of his mind," says the man behind award-winning films such as David Cronenberg's Crash and Eastern Promises, Istvan Szabo's Sunshine, and Jeremy Podewsa's Fugitive Pieces. "It's so hard to make a movie - it takes such a long time, so much effort - that to make a film, for me, for any reason than my own passion, makes no sense."

The award-winning film about Britain’s wartime king has been condemned for whitewashing history by an anonymous critic who some suggest is seeking to upset the film’s Oscar chances.

The King’s Speech, which stars Colin Firth as King George VI, follows the monarch as he ascended to the throne in 1936 and attempted to conquer his life-long speech impediment.

The film ends with the king’s powerful speech as Britain entered the Second World War, but in general makes few mentions of the Nazi threat.