Actress Tanya Roberts died Monday night January 4, 2021, after news of her death began circulating a day earlier. Headlines began appearing throughout the internet on the evening of Jan. 3 and her obituary ran in published reports in Monday’s newspapers. Turns out that the 65-year-old actress, best known for her roles as a Bond girl in 1985’s A View to a Kill, and on TV’s Charlie’s Angels and That ’70s Show, hadn’t yet died. Throughout the day on Jan. 4, however, her health condition remained dire. Roberts was at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, reportedly on a ventilator. She had collapsed at her home on Dec. 24.
At 9:43 a.m. ET on Tuesday, Jan. 5, TMZ reported that the actress had died Monday night.
On Sunday night, her longtime partner, Lance O’Brien, told TMZ, “As I held her in her last moments, she opened her eyes. I was able to see her beautiful eyes one last time. Tanya had the most beautiful eyes.”
Roberts’ publicist Mike Pingel mistook what O’Brien had told him and prematurely announced her death on Sunday. On Monday, he backpedaled, telling PEOPLE, “She was alive at 10 a.m. this morning.” People reports that O’Brien “received a call from the hospital saying she was not dead.”
“I don’t want to blame [him] in any way, shape or form,” O’Brien was quoted as saying. “I was in total shock, and I did say goodbye to her.”
“Currently, it’s not looking good,” Pingel said on Monday. “It’s very dire. Hold her in your prayers.”
The TV series Inside Edition has an interview where the reporter broke the news to O’Brien that the actress was, indeed still alive.
The death of Tanya Roberts was attributed to complications from a urinary tract infection that entered her bloodstream. The actress reportedly had a history of hepatitis C.
Born Victoria Leigh Blum in 1955 and raised in the Bronx, N.Y., Roberts left high school in order to pursue a career in the performing arts. “I was a wild and crazy teenager so it took me awhile to get my act together,” she said, who began studying at the famed Actors Studio under Lee Strasberg and Uta Hagen in New York. While landing a variety of modeling gigs and shooting television commercials for Ultra Brite and Clairol, she worked as an Arthur Murray dance instructor.
Soon after moving to Los Angeles, Roberts caught her big break as the sultry private investigator Julie Rogers where she joined Jaclyn Smith and Cheryl Ladd for season five of Aaron Spelling’s popular crime drama Charlie’s Angels in 1980-81, reportedly landing the role after only two auditions. “It launched my career,” she said. “I did a dramatic scene where I had to cry, which was no problem because when I was younger I could cry at the drop of a hat.”
After posing for Playboy in the October 1982 issue, Roberts went on to star in a string of big screen features including 1982’s The Beastmaster, 1984’s Sheena and 1985’s James Bond film, A View to a Kill, with Roger Moore.
Related: Roger Moore died in 2017
On That ‘70s Show, Roberts played Midge Pinciotti, an enthusiastic housewife enjoying the throes of women’s lib. “Although my character is not formally educated, she is very perceptive and bright,” she said.
