Tanya Roberts, the one-time Bond girl and “That ’70s Show” star, died on Monday night following an erroneous announcement from her spokesperson that she had died one day earlier.
Roberts’ long-time partner, Lance O’Brien, told Fox News on Tuesday that Roberts died on Monday night after being hospitalized for UTI complications that he said spread to her kidneys, liver, and gallbladder before it “got into her blood.”
The actress appeared in “Charlie’s Angels” in 1980 before starring alongside Roger Moore as a Bond girl in the 1985 film, “A View to a Kill.” Roberts starred as Stacey Sutton, an American geologist who became the victim of antagonist Max Zorin, played by veteran actor Christopher Walken.
However, Roberts was perhaps best known for her role as Midge Pinciotti, the mother of Donna Pinciotti on the hit sitcom ‘That’s ’70s Show.’ The character was known for irritating her teenage daughter and her husband with her naive disposition, always adding moments of levity to their often dramatic household.
She left the Fox sitcom in 2001 to take care of her terminally ill husband, but briefly picked up her place in 2004.
Born in New York as Victoria Leigh Blum, Roberts started her modeling career before moving to the 1976 horror movie “Forced Entry.”
She married screenwriter Barry Roberts in the 1970s and remained together until he died in 2006.
The actress’ publicist, Mike Pingel, initially announced early reports of her death on her official Facebook fan page. Hours later, reports emerged that the actress had not yet passed away although she had been hospitalized.
O’Brien clarified that he had visited her, but that the doctors had told her she was near death. He then told her publicist that he had “said goodbye” to Roberts, which he felt contributed to the misunderstanding.
“It may be just some miscommunication somehow,” O’Brien told Fox News of the reporting snafu.
“Next thing I know, I get home, and on my cellphone, there’s a [notification] that Tanya Roberts passed away,” recalled O’Brien, later adding: “That’s the honest-to-God truth, exactly what happened.”
In a follow-up interview on Tuesday, O’Brien said to Fox News, “The last time I said something, it got blown out of proportion. The hospital called and told me around 9:30 [PT] that she had passed. I was asleep, they woke me up, and I just cried myself back to sleep.”
O’Brien added that he is “devastated” about what he’s going to do without her.
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