Actress Sharon Tate is a star whose tragic story lives on to this day, retold in books, documentaries and feature length films. The Valley of the Dolls star rose to fame in the 1960s and was a popular figure at the time, as she and her now-controversial director husband Roman Polanski dominated the filmmaking scene. In 1969, Tate, celebrity hairstylist Jay Sebring, Folger coffee heiress Abigail Folger and Polanski’s close friend Wojciech Frykowski were tragically murdered by members of the Manson Family in an unexplained crime spree which shook Hollywood and the rest of America to its core.
Tate’s death is still regularly discussed, sometimes because members of the Manson family are being released for their crimes after serving their multi-decade prison terms, or because items linked to her death are selling for inordinate amounts of money (the front door of the house she died in recently sold for $127,000). These updates often reignite the interest in Tate, which peaked back in 2019 following the release of Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. While the film doesn’t specifically focus on Tate’s tragic end, it does feature Tate as a character.
Tarantino’s project, which is set the same year as Tate’s murder, centered on the plight of TV star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) who both attempt to navigate the end of Hollywood’s golden era. The film featured Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate, who happened to live next door to DiCaprio’s fictional character Dalton. Tate was an actor who rose to prominence in the 1960s, whose notable screen credits include Valley of the Dolls and The Fearless Vampire Killers; a film directed by her husband Roman Polanski. The actor was born in 1943 in Dallas, Texas to a stern US army colonel called Paul James Tate and Doris Gwendolyn Tate; who later became a prominent activist following the death of her daughter.
Tate was in the limelight from a young age as a pageant queen and model, drawing attention for her beautiful looks wherever she went. As a military kid, she moved around the world with her family and eventually studied at an American high school in Verona, Italy in 1961; where she picked up Italian. While on a date at seventeen years old, she was raped by a soldier but kept the incident secret but told her future husband Polanski about it according to a 2016 biography called Sharon Tate: A Life. Polanski would later go on to say that it “hadn’t left her emotionally scarred”.
Described by many as a gentle-hearted woman, her sister Debra Tate recalled years later to the Irish Examiner, “Not only was she physically exquisite, her inside, her heart, her soul, her kindness, her humanity — all of that was as beautiful as the exterior. She was kind, loving and giving.”. “She had a unique quality to make anybody, and I mean anybody, feel as if they were the only person that mattered in the whole world. And that could be a beggar in the street. She just had a very warm personal and genuine concern for people,” she continued.
Debra called her her “everything”, as well as “my mother, my sister, my confidant, my best friend”. Polanski also said possessed the “sort of radiance that springs from a kind and gentle nature”, calling her “the love of my life” in a book Debra wrote about her sister called Sharon Tate Recollection. While there, she also starred as an extra on a film called Adventures of a Young Man starring Paul Newman and West Side Story’s Richard Beymer (who she began dating).
She later moved to Los Angeles, where Beymer helped get her signed to his agent, after which she began booking advertisements and gradually attracting the attention of agent Martin Ransohoff. After moving to Ransohoff, she began to attend her first ever acting lessons to build her professional skills. She then began dating Philippe Forquet in a tumultuous relationship, which included instances of domestic abuse which at one point sent Tate to the hospital in 1964.
After their relationship came to an end, she began to date celebrity hairstylist Jay Sebring, who used to cut hair for the likes of Frank Sinatra. She would go on to pursue further acting roles which included The Beverly Hillbillies, Eye of the Devil and Don’t Make Waves. She would also later star in her future husband Polanski’s film The Fearless Vampire Killers and Valley of the Dolls. Towards the end of her life, she would make a name for herself in Europe (where her husband Polanski was working on various projects) as they were viewed as a power couple, before moving home to the United States in the hopes of giving birth to their first child on American soil.
