For his latest premiere, Roman Polanski was live in London...from his home in Paris.

Testifying in the first day of his London libel trial against Vanity Fair, the legendary director blasted the magazine for publishing an article claiming he tried to seduce a woman on the way to the funeral of his murdered wife, Sharon Tate.

Polanski appeared via satellite from his Parisian home after an unprecedented ruling by England's highest court permitted him to beam his testimony to Britain to avoid being extradited to the U.S. Unlike France, where the Polish-born filmmaker maintains citizenship, British authorities could detain the director and send him to California, where he fled from in 1977 after pleading guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old girl. The 71-year-old filmmaker has not returned since for fear of being arrested. He didn't even turn up to collect his Oscar for 2002's The Pianist.

The backstory to the salacious trial is almost as compelling as the case itself.

Polanski sued Vanity Fair's U.K.-based publisher, Cond? Nast, over a July 2002 article. The piece claimed that in 1969, after the eight-months pregnant Tate and four others were murdered in Polanski's Hollywood Hills home by Charles Manson and his followers, Polanski didn't immediately fly from London, where he was working, to California for the funeral.

According to Vanity Fair, Polanski made a brief stopover in New York and went to Elaine's restaurant. While there, the magazine reported he made sexual advances to a "Swedish beauty," pulled up a chair next to her, ran a hand along her thigh and turned on the "Polish charm." "I will make another Sharon Tate of you," he told the woman, per the article.

Taking the virtual stand on Monday and questioned by his own attorney, John Kelsey-Fry, a choked-up Polanski strongly disputed the magazine's depiction of him, calling the report an "abominable lie."

"I was in a state of shock" after reading the story, he said. "This was the worst thing ever written about me. It's absolutely not true. But I think it was particularly hurtful, because it dishonors the memory of Sharon."

While Polanski admitted that his memories in the days following his wife's murder were cloudy because he was "sedated and dazed," he insists the supposed seduction never took place and he only went to Elaine's after the burial.

To prove that point, Kelsey-Fry plans to call to the stand on Tuesday actress Mia Farrow, the star of the director's classic horror flick, Rosemary's Baby. She's expected to testify that the two dined together at Elaine's and discussed his anguish over his wife's murder. Also expected to testify will be Tate's sister, Debra.

"This case is not about sex," Kelsey-Fry said in his opening statement, hoping to play down discussion of the Chinatown director's well publicized romantic life and infamous rape case. "It would demonstrate a callous indifferent to what had happened and to his wife's memory of breathtaking proportions. "

But it didn't take long for Vanity Fair attorney Thomas Shields to go after Polanski's promiscuity. During cross-examination, Shields got the filmmaker to fess up about having "casual sex" before he was married to Tate as well as being unfaithful to her during the marriage.

"You are a fugitive from morality," Shields said.

The director acknowledged to once having a threesome with two women, one of whom was 15, and said that it was possible he may have seduced someone four weeks after Tate's death. But, he added, sex was therapeutic for him.

"The death of Sharon...was an immeasurable shock to me, and in such moments some people turn to drugs, some to alcohol, some go to a monastery, for me it was sex," he said.

While both sides now agree that the alleged seduction in the Vanity Fair piece did not occur at the restaurant while Polanski was en route to Tate's funeral, the magazine stood by its story, saying Polanski's aberrant behavior was still accurate and not libelous since the incident in question probably occurred several weeks later.