Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski: All About the Hollywood Couple

Filmmaker Roman Polanski and actress Sharon Tate had one of the most infamous relationships in Hollywood history. Their complicated one-year marriage ended tragically in 1969 when Tate, who was eight-and-a-half months pregnant with the couple's first child, was murdered — along with her friends Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski and Steven Parent — in a horrific stabbing at their Los Angeles-area home by followers of cult leader Charles Manson. Nearly eight years after Tate's death, Polanski was arrested for the sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl. Several months after his arrest, Polanski fled the U.S. before completing his sentence and has never returned.

Manson, whose name became synonymous with evil after his arrest in connection with the 1969 murders of Tate and eight others, died of natural causes on Nov. 19, 2017. He was 83 and serving a life sentence in California's Corcoran State Prison at the time of his death, which was confirmed by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

"I said a prayer for his soul," Sharon's sister Debra Tate told PEOPLE of the moment after she received a call from a prison official informing her Manson died.

Polanski's short marriage to Tate returned to the spotlight after Manson's death and then again after actress Margot Robbie appeared as a fictionalized version of Tate in Quentin Tarantino's 2019 film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Here's a look back at the controversial relationship between Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski.

Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski's strange first dates

The two were first introduced in the mid-1960s by producer Martin Ransohoff, who was attempting to help Tate snag a role in Polanski's upcoming film. The actress relayed to her sister, Debra, that she and Polanski didn't immediately hit it off, as revealed in the book Sharon Tate: Recollection, compiled by Debra. According to the tribute, Polanski refused to talk to Tate on their first date. On the couple's second excursion, he allegedly scared Tate by "storming" at her while wearing a Frankenstein mask.

Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski make a movie together

After their bizarre introduction, Tate landed the role of Sarah Shagal in the Polanski-directed film The Fearless Vampire Killers. Polanski also costarred in the film as Alfred, Tate's romantic interest.

Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski's rocky marriage

Despite the less-than-idyllic meeting, the pair got married on Jan. 20, 1968, in London. Their marriage was riddled with wild rumors — ranging from infidelity to forced threesomes. Tate was reportedly deeply in love with Polanski, who was nine years her senior, though she was also extremely intimidated by the director. In the book Sharon Tate: A Life, one of Tate's friends, Joanna Pettet, said Polanski had a high level of control over his wife. "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."

In an introduction to Sharon Tate: Recollection, Polanski recalled some telling moments from their marriage. "She was also a born housewife," said Polanski. "Aside from cooking like a dream, she used to cut my hair, a skill acquired from [ex-boyfriend and hairstylist] Jay Sebring."

Tate's friend, photographer Shahrokh Hatami, also alleged in Sharon Tate: A Life that Polanski forced Tate to engage in threesomes with random women. "Sharon told me about Roman — about imposed sexual scenes on her," Hatami said. "He was bringing other girls to have threesomes with Sharon, and Sharon didn't like that he was picking up girls on the Sunset and bringing them home to have sex with them."

The director allegedly refused to sleep with Tate after she became pregnant with his baby in 1968 and urged her to get an abortion. When she protested, he left the U.S. for London and had an affair with Michelle Phillips of The Mamas & the Papas, according to author Ed Sanders in Sharon Tate: A Life.

Sharon Tate's murder

On Aug. 9, 1969, Tate, who was pregnant with the couple's son, was murdered along with four others in the home she shared with Polanski. Tate and her friends — Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski and Steven Parent — were murdered by members of Manson's cult as part of Manson's attempted plan to start a race war called "Helter Skelter." They were each stabbed a dozen times and their blood used by the murderers to write on the walls.

RELATED VIDEO: Cult Leader Charles Manson, Whose 1969 Murders Horrified the Nation, Dead at 83

Debra Tate later recalled to PEOPLE what her father said about the crime scene: "He said in all his time in the military that he hadn't seen such slaughter. And he cried."

Roman Polanski's response to Sharon Tate's death

Polanski was in London when he received the news that his pregnant wife had been killed. His friend Andy Braunsberg, who was with Polanski when he got the life-changing phone call, said the Rosemary's Baby director was inconsolable. "He literally unraveled in front of my eyes," Braunsberg said in Sharon Tate: A Life. "He disintegrated."

Polanski confessed how Tate's death still impacts him every day in Sharon Tate: Recollection. "Even after so many years, I find myself unable to watch a spectacular sunset or visit a lovely old house or experience visual pleasure of any kind without instinctively telling myself how much she would have loved it all," Polanski wrote. "In these ways I shall remain faithful to her till the day I die."

Polanski also expressed that he felt judged by the public for Tate's death. In the press notes for his 2019 film J'Accuse, Polanski said, "The way people see me, my 'image,' did indeed start to form with Sharon Tate's death. When it happened, even though I was already going through a terrible time, the press got hold of the tragedy and, unsure how to deal with it, covered it in the most despicable way, implying, among other things, that I was one of the people responsible for her murder, against a background of satanism."

The director said he was under scrutiny for "several months until the police finally found the real killers, Charles Manson and his 'family.'"