Actor Christopher Jones has confessed that he had a romantic relationship with actress Sharon Tate before she was killed in her Los Angeles home.

The Daily Mail stated Friday that his disclosure comes only weeks before the publication of a new biography about Tate’s husband, Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski. Tate, who appeared in the campy “Valley of the Dolls,” was murdered along with four other pals on Aug. 9, 1969, by Charles Manson’s followers.

Tate was eight months pregnant with Polanski’s child at the time, but her assailants paid her little regard, stabbing her 16 times and killing her four companions, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Steven Parent, and Voyteck Frykowski.

Jones, who is best known for his portrayal as Major Randolph Doryan in David Lean’s epic “Ryan’s Daughter,” says he met Tate when she was six weeks pregnant with Polanski’s kid.

When asked why he exposed his affair now during an interview in Los Angeles with a British publication, Jones answered, “I don’t think I’m betraying any confidence by talking about it.”

“I loved Sharon, and she loved me,” he said, adding that he had “no intention” of separating with her.

“I don’t feel guilty.”

He stated about Tate, “I loved being with her. Other women I’ve been with, I couldn’t remember if my life depended on it, but she stuck in my mind.”

Christopher, at 66, has kept his youthful appearance, despite the fact that the years haven’t always been kind to him.

“She looked amazing.

“We sat next to each other and she was very nervous, almost like a deer, but she had this beautiful, perfect face. She had this little scar on the left of her face against all this perfection, and when I reached over to touch it, I could feel her react.

“She kept talking about off-the-wall spiritual things – she talked about reincarnation and how in a previous life she had died in a fire aged nine.

“The second she said that, the doors to the restaurant blew open even though there wasn’t any wind, and she looked really shocked.”

“I wasn’t planning on anything because I knew she was married to Roman.”

“We were sitting on the couch talking when I finally asked her where Roman was. She said he was stuck in London having trouble with his passport.

“We were talking and getting closer, and although her skirt was riding right up, she wasn’t bothering to pull it down.

“She then said: ‘Chris, have you ever smoked opium?’ and I told her no, and she said I had to try it and that she had some in the bedroom.

“Everyone says that Sharon didn’t smoke pot, yet she was definitely looking for this bag, but couldn’t find it so came back over to me, standing by the bed.

“One minute she was looking at me and the next thing I knew, she was pulling me on top of her on to the bed.

“I hadn’t even taken my clothes off but after we’d made love I told her I was going upstairs to sleep. She asked me to stay, but when I looked out the window I couldn’t see a fire escape and my first thought then was: ‘What if Polanski comes back?’.

“I wasn’t afraid of him, just worried about the repercussions, but she stopped asking me to stay and I left.

“The next day I ran into actress Nathalie Delon (wife of actor Alain Delon) who was a friend of Sharon’s and whom I had also been seeing, and she said: ‘Chris, what did you do to Sharon? She has never been so in love.’

“Yes, I knew Sharon was pregnant and of course I felt guilty about that, but I’ve thought about this a lot since and the marriage vows say: ‘What God joins together, let no man put asunder.’

“Well, God obviously separated them and put me there.”

Jones and Tate continued to see one other, and although though he was smitten with Tate, it didn’t stop him from having affairs with Pia Degermark and his ex-wife Susan.

“They all knew about each other.

“Well, maybe Susan didn’t know about Sharon, but I had a little too much on my plate, and even that wasn’t enough.

“One night, we were out at dinner and there was an Italian girl there. All I can say is that I was young, had a high libido and no conscience, and I just wanted to figure out a way for my manager to take Sharon back to the hotel so I could see the Italian girl.

“After I’d been with her, I came back to the hotel and tried Sharon’s door which was open.

“I thought she was going to be mad at me but she didn’t say anything, and after we’d made love, she whispered in my ear: ‘That was the wrong way.’

“That stuck in my mind because the way we made love wasn’t gentle, it was lustful, and although she wanted it to be more romantic, I wasn’t feeling romantic.

“I felt that she was a woman I’d been living with for a while, whom you sneak back in on in the middle of the night.

“She didn’t seem the least bit concerned about Roman, so either I was irresistible or she must have been unhappy. Although she seemed very happy that she was pregnant.

“I worried professionally in case I might have to work with Roman in the future.

“There was probably some guilt on my part there, in the way that any man would think to themselves: ‘I deserve to be shot’.”

Jones recounts of their last night together in Rome: “I told her that we’d get back together when we were in America and she agreed, and when I said: ‘What about Roman?’, she said: ‘Don’t worry about Roman.’

“I didn’t envisage that she would leave Roman; I didn’t envisage anything.

“I thought it was love. Whatever brief time we had together, we were very happy. I always expected to see her again.”

Jones went from Rome to Dingle to begin shooting on Ryan’s Daughter and Tate returned to LA.

“When she got there, she called my manager a couple of times,” says Jones, “but she didn’t ask to talk to me, which got me a little p****d off. But I was just getting on with my life.”

‘Ryan’s Daughter’ Star Christopher Jones quit acting at peak of career

• 2 Feb 2014

Christopher Jones, an heir apparent to James Dean who played in films like The Looking Glass War and Ryan’s Daughter before retiring from show business at the peak of his brief but spectacular career, has died. He was 72.

Jones died in Los Alamitos Medical Center on Friday. His partner, Paule McKenna, says he was diagnosed with gallbladder cancer in December. He had been living at Seal Beach for some years with McKenna, with whom he had four children, and worked as an artist on the side.

No one appeared to know why Jones had left the film industry. However, he admitted to an interviewer in 2007 that he was having an affair with actress Sharon Tate when she and four others were brutally murdered by members of the Charles Manson cult in the California house of Tate’s husband, director Roman Polanski, who was away on August 9th, 1969. Jones was in Ireland filming Ryan’s Daughter at the time.

Jones starred as Randolph Doryan, a handsome but shell-shocked British officer who had an affair with a married Irish woman (Sarah Miles) during World War I in David Lean’s Ryan’s Daughter (1970). In the woods, he and Miles have a remarkable lovemaking scene.

Miles paid respect to the troubled actor, revealing that his reaction to Tate’s death left him unable to work on the picture.

“Christopher Jones was an enigma and a deeply troubled soul,” she said from her West Sussex home to mirror.co.uk.

“He had a rare charisma on screen and no amount of great acting can replicate that.

“At the time (of Tate’s murder) Christopher was distinctly disturbed about something, so much so that he could hardly perform at all. Stanley Holloway’s son, Julian, had to dub him throughout. At the end of the shoot he was taken off to a mental hospital.”

Years later, Miles alleged, Jones approached her to explain what had transpired, claiming Tate was planning to divorce Polanski so the two could be together.

“He appeared at a first night of a play I had written, Charlemagne, in Hollywood (about 1994),” the actress, 72, said.

“The reason, he claimed, he was so tormented and utterly useless during filming was because before we started shooting Ryan’s Daughter he had fallen deeply in love with Sharon Tate while filming in Rome.

“They were totally besotted with each other and Sharon had agreed to divorce Roman Polanski so that they could to be together once Ryan’s Daughter was in the can.

“Sharon Tate’s infamous Charles Manson murder took place a few weeks into shooting Ryan’s Daughter and Christopher had to keep the whole tragedy to himself.

“At the time I was not sure whether to believe him, but that was the last time I saw Christopher Jones.”

Jones only starred in one more film, Mad Dog Time, a 1996 comedy in which he had a minor role as a favor to the director, Larry Bishop.

Jones, who grew up in a Tennessee children’s home, was bombarded with offers even after he left the business. In a 1999 interview with the Toronto newspaper Globe and Mail, he claimed, “I was sent many scripts that I never even looked at or acknowledged. I was too busy living and having fun.”

He auditioned for the Actors Studio in New York and made his Broadway debut in 1961 with The Night of the Iguana. He later married Susan Strasberg, the daughter of Lee Strasberg, the founder of the Actors Studio.

Jones moved to Hollywood and won a role as the renowned bandit in The Legend of Jesse James, but the Western only lasted one season, broadcast from September 1965 to May 1966, due to stiff competition on Monday evenings from CBS’s The Lucy Show and NBC’s Dr. Kildare.

In 1968, he featured opposite Shelley Winters in the cult classic Wild in the Streets, which launched his cinematic career. Chubasco, The Looking Glass War, Brief Season, and Three in the Attic are among his other films.