Farrow says Polanski snubbed woman's advance

Ms Farrow, a close friend of both Mr Polanski and Ms Tate, took the witness stand in Court 13, where she described the Polish-born director's complete sense of "shock and despair'' at the killings of his pregnant wife and their four friends.

Mr Polanski is suing Vanity Fair, the New York-based magazine for defamation over an article that described an evening in August 1969 when he joined a table of strangers at a New York restaurant.

The magazine said he engaged the group in conversation and slid his hand between a woman's thighs before promising to "make her the next Sharon Tate".

Ms Farrow said she had met Mr Polanski at Elaine's, the fashionable New York restaurant where the seduction attempt was alleged to have taken place, in the month of the murders. It was a meeting so emotional that it was "scalded on my mind", she told the court.

Ms Farrow - who starred in Polanski's film Rosemary's Baby - said that, far from seeking out the attention of women, the director had been lost in his grief. While they waited at the bar for a table, Ms Farrow - who was pregnant at the time by her future husband André Previn - said two women tried to flirt with Mr Polanski. She said he paid no attention and said she found the approach inappropriate. "I think I might have been crying and hugging him and he just brushed them off."

The case continues.