The curious connection between Olivia Hussey and Sharon Tate
Hollywood was rocked when the Manson Family brutally murdered Sharon Tate and four of her friends in 1969. Under the instruction of cult leader Charles Manson, several of his followers broke into the actor’s Los Angeles home, stabbing and shooting everyone on the property. The cult wanted to commit a crime that would, according to Tate’s killer Susan Atkins, “shock the world” and force people to “stand up and take notice”.
To perfectly reflect the mood, writer Joan Didion detailed in her essay The White Album: “Many people I know in Los Angeles believe that the sixties ended abruptly on August 9th, 1969, ended at the exact moment when word of the murders on Cielo Drive travelled like brushfire through the community, and in a sense this is true. The tension broke that day. The paranoia was fulfilled.”
However, the paranoia sweeping Los Angeles did not affect British actor Olivia Hussey, who moved to the area a month after the vicious crimes occurred. Born in 1951, Hussey rose to fame after portraying Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 adaptation of William Shakespeare’s iconic play Romeo and Juliet.
Hussey had ambitions of becoming an actor from a young age, writing in her memoir, The Girl on the Balcony: “I used to walk around the house with a towel on my head pretending to be a nun. One day I just said, ‘I don’t know about being a nun. I like pretending to be a nun. Maybe if I was an actress, I could pretend to be a nun and still be me.'” After her performance as Juliet, which won her a Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year, Hussey relocated to Los Angeles to continue her acting career.
Before the Manson murders took place, the young actor had planned on moving into the guesthouse of Tate and her husband Roman Polanski’s 10050 Cielo Drive house, which Hussey’s agent, Rudi Altobelli, owned at the time. He had arranged for the 18-year-old British star to help then-pregnant Tate once her baby had been born. On the phone, the two actors exchanged words, with Hussey recalling: “I said to Sharon, ‘Rudi said we’re going to be best friends.’ She told me, ‘I’m so looking forward to meeting you, my baby is coming soon.’ She was so sweet.”
Despite the tragedy, Hussey decided to move into Cielo Drive regardless. She recalls making her morning coffee as the Manson family member Linda Kasabian showed police around the property, detailing the murder. “I could hear her say, ‘And that Abigail Folger was lying over there, and she had lots of stab wounds’,” she said. “People would say, ‘How could you live there?’ I’d say it was actually the safest house in Hollywood. There was a button under the desk in the living room that buzzed directly to the Beverly Hills police. When you walked in there, there were no bad vibes or anything. All I felt was the sweetness of Sharon. I never felt afraid.”
Unfortunately, just a few weeks after she moved into the home, her ex-boyfriend, actor Christopher Jones – who claimed to have had an affair with Tate shortly before she was murdered – attacked and raped Hussey. In her memoir, she recalled how “we were talking and his eyes glazed over, and he punched me in the stomach”. Detailing further, she continued: “I didn’t know if he was going to kill me. My face was like a balloon. I had a bloody nose, my lip was split open, and I had a black eye. It was terrifying.”
The attack left Hussey pregnant, although she decided to have an abortion. Shortly after, she began dating Terry Melcher, who was believed to be Manson’s intended target in the murders, forcing him to hire bodyguards. Eventually, Hussey found happiness with her husband, Dino Martin, the eldest son of Dean Martin, before divorcing in 1978. Since then, she has married twice more and largely dedicates her time to animal activism.
As for the house, it was demolished in 1994, with a new property rebuilt that didn’t resemble the site of the murders. The last resident of 10050 Cielo Drive before its reconstruction was Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor, who set up a recording studio there. The musician only managed to stay in the property for a year before moving out, claiming, “There was too much history in that house for me to handle.”
