On August 9, 1969, Sharon Tate and four others — Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski, and Steven Parent — were brutally murdered by members of the notorious Manson Family. She was stabbed 16 times (per The New York Times). Tate was 26 years old and eight and a half months pregnant at the time of her murder.
The Tate–LaBianca killings (the perpetrators killed two more people the next day: Leno and Rosemary LaBianca) have become one of the most high-profile and infamous murders in American history.
Before this tragedy, Tate was a highly popular actress and a Hollywood starlet. Known for her beauty and comedic acting chops, she was able to secure herself a seat at the tumultuous Tinseltown table. As her star began to shine bright, she fell in love with a big-name director – Roman Polanski.
Tate and Polanski married in a London ceremony on January 20, 1968. Tate, 24, and Roman Polanski, 34, proved to be among the most defining celebrity couples of the ’60s. However, behind the glitz and glamour, their marriage was anything but.
Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski’s marriage was a complicated one
According to multiple sources, Sharon Tate’s marriage to Roman Polanski was not idyllic, primarily due to the latter’s infidelity. In a rather famous quote, Tate reportedly admitted: “We have a good arrangement. Roman lies to me and I pretend to believe him” (via The New Republic).
American film producer Martin Ransohoff introduced the two sometime in the mid-’60s and he aimed to help Tate land a part in Polanski’s upcoming flick, The Fearless Vampire Killers (per The Independent).
Their first two meetings were awkward encounters. Polanski supposedly didn’t even speak to Tate during their first date; on their second, the director apparently frightened Tate by wearing a Frankenstein mask and charging at her (via People). The pair starred in The Fearless Vampire Killers together in 1967 and then married in ’68.
While the actress was certainly embedded in Hollywood, it’s likely she was not prepared for the permissive culture around her. After all, Tate had a rather conservative upbringing. She grew up in a “strict but loving military family” and was “raised Catholic” (per The New Republic). “I wish I had the tolerance to let everybody have complete freedom,” Tate allegedly admitted to photographer Peter Evans. “To be able to take a man home and make love and enjoy it without some lurking puritanical guilt interrupting the pleasure… Mentally it’s what I want, but emotionally it is more difficult to take.”
Author Ed Sanders — in his book Sharon Tate: A Life — describes the actress as very subservient to Polanski. “Her problem was that she had always been beautiful, and people were forever losing themselves in fantasy over her – electing her a beauty queen, imagining her as a wife, dreaming of a caress. Most people had fantasies. But a few people, like Polanski, took charge” (per People). Canadian actress Joanna Pettet, a friend of Tate’s, explained to the author that: “He told her how to dress; he told her what makeup he liked, what he didn’t like. He preferred her with nothing, no makeup.” The way Pettet explains it, Polanski ruled Tate’s “entire life.”
According to Sanders, another friend of Tate’s, photographer Shahrokh Hatami, explained that “Sharon told me about Roman – about imposed sexual scenes on her.” Hatami elaborated, “He was bringing other girls to have threesomes with Sharon, and Sharon didn’t like it that he was picking up girls on the Sunset and bringing them home to have sex with them” (via People). The author further notes that Polanski and Tate had a falling out after she refused to get an abortion. Polanski allegedly reacted by leaving for London and having an affair with The Mamas & the Papas singer, Michelle Phillips.
In 2019, Margot Robbie portrayed Sharon Tate in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time In Hollywood. This romantic flick showcases the fictional adventures of Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). In this alternate world, Tate is inadvertently saved by Dalton and Booth when they brutally dispatch the Manson Family attackers. Once Upon a Time In Hollywood was released to critical acclaim. While the movie did not focus on Tate’s character too much, or her messy relationship with Polanski, Robbie still gave a touching performance as the ’60s icon.
Almost eight years after Sharon Tate’s murder, Roman Polanski would be arrested for the sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl.