Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Farewell Tanya
Bond girl and Charlie’s Angel dies at 65 a day after premature statement
FORMER Bond girl Tanya Roberts has died at the age of 65 – 24 hours after she was first declared dead.
The actress passed away on Monday night at LA’S Cedars-sinai Hospital f o l l o w i n g a n u mb e r o f b i z a r re statements on her condition.
On Sunday her publicist Mike Pingel announced she had died – after her partner, Lance O’brien, said he had visited the actress i n hospital earlier that day.
O’brien said she had opened her eyes but then shut them and he saw her fade away.
He said he thought she was dead and l e f t , wi t h o u t speaking to medical staff.
But O’brien received a call on Monday while f i lmin g an int er v i e w informing him she was gravely ill but still alive.
Pingel said: “After seeing her, he felt she had passed.
“Th e do ctors from Cedars-sinai called him and told him at 10am that she had not passed, but it is dire. Please keep her in your prayers.”
Roberts, who starred as Stacey Sutton in A View to a Kill with 007 Sir Roger Moore in 1985, died around 9pm on
ROLE Charlie’s Angels with Jaclyn Smith & Cheryl Ladd
Monday. Pingel, who later picked O’brien up from the hospital, said he told him: “She died in my arms.” Roberts, born Victoria Leigh Blum, had collapsed while walking her dogs on Christmas Eve.
She landed her first big TV role in 1980 i n Charlie’s Angels and also appeared in That ’70s Show.
Pingel had said in his first announcement: “I’m devastated. She was brilliant and beautiful. I feel like a light has been taken away.” Britt Ekland, who starred in 1974 Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun, tweeted: “RIP Tanya Roberts. Once a Bond Girl always a Bond Girl!”
Director Don Coscarelli described her as “beautiful inside and out”.
Speaking in 2015 she suggested her career suffered after the 007 role: She said: “I said to my agent: ‘No one ever works after they get a Bond movie.’ They said: ‘Are y o u kidding? Glenn Close would do it if she could’.” Her writer husband Barry’s terminal illness led her to quit That ’70s show in 2001, and he died in 2006 aged 60.