Tanya Roberts, a Charlie’s Angel and a Bond Girl, passes away at 65

Written by Anita Gates
Tanya Roberts, the breathy-voiced actress who discovered fame within the Eighties as a detective on Charlie’s Angels and as a courageous earth scientist within the James Bond movie A View to a Kill, has died in Los Angeles. She was 65.
Her demise, at Cedars-Sinai Hospital, was confirmed by her companion, Lance O’Brien, on Tuesday morning. He mentioned she had died in a single day. Her publicist, who was given faulty info, had introduced her demise to the information media early Monday, and a few information organizations printed obituaries about her prematurely.
The publicist, Mike Pingel, mentioned Roberts had collapsed on December 24 after strolling her canines close to her Hollywood Hills dwelling and was placed on a ventilator on the hospital. He didn’t give the reason for demise, however mentioned it was not associated to COVID-19. He mentioned she had not been noticeably sick earlier than she collapsed.
Tanya Roberts’ huge appearing break got here in her mid-20s when she was forged within the fifth and final season of Charlie’s Angels, ABC’s drama sequence that, buying and selling on its stars’ intercourse enchantment, adopted the exploits of three engaging former cops who usually fought crime sporting brief shorts, low-cut blouses and even bikinis.
The present was a right away hit in 1976, however Farrah Fawcett, its breakout star, left after one season, changed by Cheryl Ladd. Kate Jackson stop in 1979, and her substitute, Shelley Hack, was gone after only one season. Roberts changed Hack. Jaclyn Smith appeared all through the sequence run.
There have been excessive hopes for Roberts when she joined the forged. Her character, Julie, had a few of Jackson’s character’s street-wise angle; Julie was identified to knock a handgun proper out of a troublesome felony’s hand. Her half couldn’t save the present’s plummeting rankings, nevertheless it did result in an lively decade for her in Hollywood.
Most notably, she was a “Bond girl,” enjoying a geologist threatened by a microchip-monopolist madman (Christopher Walken) in A View to a Kill (1985), Roger Moore’s final look as Agent 007.
Roberts additionally appeared in The Beastmaster (1982), a fantasy movie. And she performed the title position in Sheena (1984), a extremely publicized journey movie impressed by a queen-of-the-jungle comedian e book character. Sheena, a feminine Tarzan sort, wore skimpy fur outfits with decolletage, rode a zebra, talked to animals and shape-shifted. The movie flopped on the field workplace, and Roberts started fading from public view.
She returned to the highlight in 1998 on the sitcom That ’70s Show because the glamorous, youngish Midwestern mother of a teenage lady (Laura Prepon). In that position she was stunning, slim and horny — and delightfully dimwitted. The comedian thriller, 12 months after 12 months, was how her brief, dumpy husband, performed by Don Stark with frighteningly overgrown sideburns, had ever gained her coronary heart. Roberts appeared on the present for 3 seasons and later made visitor visits.
She was born Victoria Leigh Blum in New York City on Oct. 15, 1955, the second of two daughters of Oscar Maximilian Blum, a fountain pen salesman, and Dorothy Leigh (Smith) Blum. According to some sources, Tanya was her nickname. She spent her childhood within the Bronx and lived briefly in Canada after her dad and mom’ divorce. She started her profession by operating away from dwelling to turn out to be a mannequin when she was 15.
Back in New York, she studied appearing, appeared in some off-Broadway productions and labored as a mannequin and a dance teacher to make ends meet. Her modeling profession included work for Clairol and Ultra-Brite toothpaste. She made her display screen debut within the horror thriller The Last Victim (1976), a few serial rapist-murderer.
After Charlie’s Angels, Tanya Roberts acted in each tv and movies. Her roles included the personal eye Mike Hammer’s secretary within the tv film Murder Me, Murder You (1983), a detective working undercover at a intercourse clinic in Sins of Desire (1993) and a talk-radio host on the erotic anthology sequence Hot Line (1994-96). Her closing display screen look was on the Showtime sequence Barbershop in 2005.
Even in her heyday, Roberts appeared to not take pleasure in being interviewed. Chatting with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show in 1981, she laughed nervously, gave brief solutions and flirted with Michael Landon, her fellow visitor. At one level, Carson talked about a canopy article about her in People journal, prompting Ed McMahon, the host’s sidekick, to counsel, “Maybe there’s something in the magazine that’d be interesting.”

Tanya Roberts was a youngster when she married in 1971, however the union was shortly annulled on the insistence of her new mother-in-law. In 1974, she met Barry Roberts, a psychology scholar, whereas each have been standing in line at a movie show. They married that 12 months. Barry Roberts grew to become a screenwriter and died in 2006 at 60.
Her survivors embody her companion, Lance O’Brien, and a sister, Barbara Chase, who was Timothy Leary’s fourth spouse.
Tanya Roberts was all the time a New Yorker at coronary heart, she contended, and never simply because she hated driving.
“L.A. drives you crazy,” she mentioned within the 1981 People journal article. “I’m used to weather and walking and people who say what they mean.”