In a bright burst of Hollywood glamour, actress Mia Farrow arrived at Roman Polanski's libel case in London today and told the jury that the events of an evening she spent with the director at a New York restaurant thirty-five years ago were "scalded" on her mind.

"What I remember is Roman and what happened with Roman that night," Ms Farrow told the High Court as she recalled meeting Mr Polanski at Elaine's restaurant in Manhattan soon after his wife's death in August 1969.

Mr Polanski's behaviour that night is the subject of his libel case against Condé Nast, the publishers of Vanity Fair.

A Vanity Fair article in 2002 said Mr Polanski had raised gasps in Elaine's by attempting to seduce a beautiful Swedish stranger even though his wife, Sharon Tate, had been murdered just days earlier.

Mr Polanski, 71, denies the incident took place and today Ms Farrow, 60, agreed with his account of the evening, saying that Mr Polanski was so upset by his wife's death he had to leave the restaurant and walk around the block before returning to eat.

"He was in really bad shape at that time," said Ms Farrow, speaking softly and wearing a black trouser suit and gold blouse.

"He had just returned from California... it was foremost in his mind," said Ms Farrow, of Mr Polanski's return from Los Angeles where he had buried his wife, who had been killed by the drug-crazed Manson "Family".

"He started telling me about events in California, what he had gone through and he got very, very upset and we had ordered our dinner, but we just left the restaurant. He was that upset and I too," recalled Ms Farrow.

"We just started walking around and around the block and he told me about visiting the house where Sharon had been killed and the others and a little kitten that Sharon had and the kitten was still there in the blood. We just walked around and around. I don’t know for how long," she said.

Ms Farrow, whom Mr Polanski directed in the Oscar-winning film, Rosemary's Baby, in 1968, said two women approached Mr Polanski as he arrived at Elaine's but that he had "brushed them off".

Questioned by Mr Polanski's counsel, John Kelsey-Fry, QC, Ms Farrow said that the Polish director, talking of nothing but his wife's murder, had ignored them.

"We were waiting for a table and I remember there were two women who seemed to be trying to flirt with him," said Ms Farrow. "I remember because I remember thinking how inappropriate it was and then we sat at our table."

"He paid no attention because we hadn’t seen each other since Sharon’s murder and that was so huge. I think I might have been crying and was hugging him and he just brushed them off."

Under cross-examination from Tom Shields, QC, who is representing Condé Nast, Ms Farrow conceded that her memory of the dinner may have become hazy but she was adamant that Mr Polanski had been in despair.

"Of this I can be sure - of his frame of mind when we there, of what we talked about, of his utter sense of loss, of despair and bewilderment and shock and love - a love he had lost. Of this I can be sure. I would not have left him in Elaine’s unattended without trusted friends," she said.

Earlier today, Mr Polanski, who won an Oscar in 2003 for The Pianist, cried as he recalled Tate's murder and questioned the memory of those who have accused him of trying to a seduce an unnamed "Swedish beauty" just days after her funeral.

The Vanity Fair article about Elaine's in 2002 claimed that Mr Polanski had sidled up to a Swedish woman and starting "a long, honeyed spiel which ended with the promise, 'And I will make another Sharon Tate out of you.'"

Mr Polankski, 71, said he wondered how Lewis Lapham, the 70-year-old editor of Harper's magazine who supplied the anecdote to Vanity Fair, could remember the alleged event with such detail.

"I am more and more astonished at the phenomenal memory these people have," said Mr Polanski said as he was cross-examined by Mr Shields, QC, by videolink from a hotel room in Paris.

Yesterday, Mr Polanski called the Vanity Fair article an "abominable lie" but admitted that he had sought solace in sex after the brutal murder of Tate and four friends on August 8 1969 while he was shooting a film in London.

"The death of Sharon and the whole tragedy and of my friends was immeasurably sad to me, and in such moments some people turn to drugs, others to alcohol, some go to a monastery - to me it was sex. I looked for solace and I tried to forget," he told the jury.

Mr Polanski is giving evidence from Paris because he fears that he may extradited to the US if he comes to London. Mr Polanski fled the US in 1978 after pleading guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old girl.

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