Personal Life

Polanski’s first wife, Barbara Lass (née Kwiatkowska), starred in When Angels Fall. The couple were married in 1959 and divorced in 1961. Martin Ransohoff introduced Polanski and rising actress Sharon Tate shortly before filming The Fearless Vampire Killers, and during the production the two of them began dating. On 20 January 1968, Polanski married Sharon Tate in London. In 1969, when she was eight and a half months pregnant she was murdered (along with four others) at the Polanski/Tate residence in Los Angeles by followers of Charles Manson. Polanski had been at his house in London at the time of the murders and immediately traveled to Los Angeles, where he was questioned by police. As there were no suspects in the case, police checked on the past history of Polanski and Tate to try to determine a motive. After a period of months, Manson and his “family” were arrested on unrelated charges, which revealed evidence of what came to be known as the Tate-LaBianca murders. Polanski returned to Europe shortly after the killers were arrested. Polanski later stated that he gave away all his possessions, as everything reminded him of Tate and was too painful for him. Polanski has declared his absence on the night of the murders from his home in Beverly Hills to be his greatest regret. In his autobiography, Polanski wrote, “Sharon’s death is the only watershed in my life that really matters”, and commented that her murder changed his personality from a “boundless, untroubled sea of expectations and optimism” to one of “ingrained pessimism … eternal dissatisfaction with life”. He described his brief time with Tate as the best years of his life.

In 1976, Polanski started a romantic relationship with Nastassja Kinski, when she was fifteen years old and he was 43 years old. In 1979, their relationship ended at the completion of filming Polanski’s Oscar nominated “Tess”, in which Kinski had played the lead role.

[Text from Wikipedia]