Sharon Tate Biography

Sharon Tate was a rising young movie star when she was killed by followers of Charles Manson in 1969.

A former homecoming queen with smart blonde good looks, Sharon Tate broke through in 1967,when she had a small part in Eye of the Devil (with David Niven) and larger parts in Valley of the Dolls (with Patty Duke) and Don’t Make Waves (with Tony Curtis). She met the Polish director Roman Polanski while shooting the horror comedy The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967). They became a popular jet-set couple, and they married on January 20, 1968.

Tate was eight months pregnant with their first child when she and four friends were murdered on August 9, 1969 in her Los Angeles home during a killing spree by the so-called Manson Family — followers of the deranged cultist Charles Manson. The grisly murders became a lurid crime landmark of the late 1960s; they were the subject of Vincent Bugliosi’s best-selling 1974 book Helter Skelter, and the inspiration for Quentin Tarantino‘s 2019 movie Once Upon a Time In Hollywood (with Margot Robbie as Tate).

Sharon Tate’s last film, The Thirteen Chairs, was released after her death in 1969. An Italian comedy, it co-starred Orson Welles. Charles Manson died in prison nearly five decades later, in 2017.