Update (January 5, 4:05 p.m. ET): Tanya Roberts’s death has been confirmed by her representative, Mike Pingel. She died Monday at about 9:30 p.m. local time at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. The cause of death was a urinary tract infection that spread to her kidney, gallbladder, liver, and blood stream, Pingel said. Lance O’Brien, Roberts’s longtime partner, received a phone call from the hospital Monday night, confirming her death. He picked up her personal possessions from the hospital Tuesday morning.
Roberts was an animal rights activist, Pingel writes in his statement, and in lieu of flowers, her family is asking for donations to be given in her name to the ASPCA. An online memorial for her will be announced soon. “The family ask for privacy as they mourn her death,” the statement closes.
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Tanya Roberts, the former Bond girl and That ’70s Show star, has died, according to TMZ. The announcement comes roughly 24 hours after the actor’s death was prematurely announced by her representative and her longtime domestic partner. She was 65 years old.
Roberts’s partner, Lance O’Brien, told TMZ on Tuesday that he received a call from one of the actor’s doctors confirming her death Monday night, just after 9 p.m. local time. The cause of the actor’s death was not reported. Per O’Brien, she collapsed on Christmas Eve after walking her dogs and was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. She was later placed on a ventilator because she was struggling to breathe, though her partner said that her death was not related to the coronavirus.
O’Brien told TMZ that he mistakenly thought Roberts was dead on Sunday. He went to the hospital that day after doctors told him that Roberts was dying. As he sat in her room, she opened her eyes and reached for him, but then she closed her eyes and “faded.” O’Brien said he was devastated and left the hospital without speaking to medical staff. He was in the middle of an interview with Inside Edition on Monday when the hospital called him, clarifying that Roberts had not yet died.
“Now you’re telling me that she’s alive?” an incredulous O’Brien says in clip, which aired on Inside Edition Monday. “Oh thank the lord, thank God.” O’Brien then begins to sob, explaining to Inside Edition correspondent Steven Fabian what just happened. “The hospital’s telling me she’s alive. They’re calling me from the ICU.”
Roberts’s death was previously announced by her representative, Mike Pingel, who told CNN he was “devastated. I’ve been friends with Tanya for over 20 years. She was full of energy, and we always had a wild time together. She was truly an angel, and I will miss her so much.” Vanity Fair has reached out to Pingel for comment.
Roberts, born Victoria Leigh Blum, was a longtime actor, shooting to fame thanks to her lead 1980 turn in the series Charlie’s Angels. She became best known for roles like Bond girl Stacey Sutton in the 1985 film A View to a Kill, and Midge Pinciotti in That ’70s Show.
She initially began her career as a model, later switching over to acting and making her screen debut in the horror film The Last Victim in 1976. Roberts quickly began racking up roles from there, which eventually led her to Charlie’s Angels, the hit series about a trio of detectives with impeccably feathered hair. Roberts played Julie Rogers, joining the show in 1980 when it was in a period of dramatic fluctuation; Farrah Fawcett had left, and ratings were shaky. Roberts handled the situation with diplomatic grace. “That’s the way every job is, I guess,” she told Johnny Carson in a sanguine 1981 interview. “There was someone before you, there’ll be somebody after you.”
The following year, she starred in the future cult hit The Beastmaster, a fantastical drama about a man who can telepathically communicate with animals, which later spawned sequels and a TV series. The James Bond franchise came calling soon after. Roberts was cast as Bond girl Stacey Sutton, a geologist and the granddaughter of a rich oil tycoon, in the 1985 film A View to a Kill, starring Roger Moore as 007. At first Roberts was hesitant to take on the role, nervous about being pigeonholed for the rest of her career. “I remember I said to my agent, ‘No one ever works after they get a Bond movie,’ and they said to me, ‘Are you kidding? Glenn Close would do it if she could,’” she told the Daily Mail in 2015. “And I thought to myself, Well, you can have regrets if you wish, but what’s the point? At the time I didn’t know what I know now, and to be honest, who would turn that role down, really?”
Roberts worked steadily over the years, landing That ’70s Show in 1998. In the popular Fox sitcom, which revolved around a group of high school stoners, Roberts played Midge Pinciotti, the lovably ditzy mother to tomboy Donna. Midge became one of her best-known roles beyond her Bond girl, and was likely how a generation of TV watchers came to know the actor.
This story is developing.
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