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 almost 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 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.