Tanya Roberts was one of the Charlie’s Angels, and her passing shocked the world. Her boyfriend at that time mistakenly shared her passing.
Roberts was born in 1949, under the name of Victoria Leigh Blum. She was raised in Bronx, New York City. She lived in a poor house with her mother and sisters. She wanted to be a star in Hollywood.
She was 15 when she ran away to follow her dreams. Her family moved to Toronto, and Roberts decided to follow her dreams. After her father passed away, Roberts got depressed.
At that moment, she decided to ran away. She started to gain money by teaching dance to old men, who were actually after her body.
Later, she met a boy, Colin, who left school like Roberts.
“It just happened. A stupid, spontaneous thing. Colin was two years older than me, a Canadian, a dropout, doing nothing. It was a love affair that turned into hatred. We never were friends. We didn’t get along at all. But I loved him, you know. I was butterflies. I’d look at him and gasp, ‘Oh my God!’ I responded to the palpitations of the heart.”
They got married and moved to New York. After Colin’s mother intervened, they annulled the marriage, as they were too young, and didn’t have the consent of their family.
After their relationship ended, Tanya met Barry Roberts, in New York, while she was waiting in queue of a cinema. He was a truck driver.
He proposed to Tanya in a subway station, and they married in 1973.
”You know you’ve got the right guy when you can sit at home with him Saturday night, just you and him and pizza,” Tanya stated back in 1980.
“Living here is like being in the country, but civilization isn’t far away when I need it,” Tanya said of her home with Barry. “It’s the house I’d always dreamed of.” she said in 2015.
Tanya made a name for herself as a model, but after Charlie’s Angels, she became a silver screen name. ”I think there’s a lot of enthusiasm on the set. We are a real team. It’s very important for us to get along because it shows in our work. I think it’s hard do continually make a classy show every week for five years with three girls. It’s not Shakespeare but I think the public looks forward to seeing something new every week,” Tanya Roberts said.
Sadly, the show was cancelled in 1981. She later starred in The Beastmaster (1982), Sheena: Queen of the Jungle (1984), Body Slam (1987), and Night Eyes (1990).
Later, she starred in 1985 James Bond movie, “a View to a Kill.” She gave life to her character, Stacey Sutton, and later she appeared in “That ’70s Show” as Midge Pinciotti.
”I was only about four hundred years too old for the part.” Tanya said when she was 57, in 2007.
Tanya left the show on the third season, after her husband passed away. They stayed together from 1973 to 2006, until Barry’s passing. They didn’t have any children.
Then she got together with Lance O’Brien. They stayed together for 18 years, until Tanya’s passing in 2020. The star was 71, and was ”healthy as a horse,” as it was stated about her.
Before Christmas of 2020, she started to feel intestinal pain and difficulty breathing. On the next morning, she collapsed and was rushed to Cedars-Sinai Hospital. Doctors found out that she was suffering from a severe urinary tract infection, which turned to sepsis.
“She was talking when I called 911. Next thing I know, she’s in intensive care on oxygen and she’s extremely sick,” O’Brien shared.
”When she saw me and I was there, I saw her eyes open,” the boyfriend said. “I felt good. I said, ‘Hey, her eyes are opening. Her eyes are opening.’ They told me that’s just a reflex.”
“She had tubes up her nose and throat, and they kept calling her Victoria —she hasn’t been called that since she was a teenager. It was so busy, I can’t begin to tell you what an awful, terrible experience it was.”
“I think COVID played a big part in it,” O’Brien added. “If you called the hospital, it sounded like something out of [sitcom] M.A.S.H.”
In the handwritten will Tanya Roberts left, she left her $3 million estate to her partner, Lance O’Brien.
“I have no reason to live,” Tanya wrote, and implied that she will leave nothing to her sister, Barbara Leary, or her nephew, Zack Leary.
”I want to leave my house … and all its belongings to my best friend Lance O’Brien – I also leave my two dogs and my Pension Plan check to Lance O’Brien,” she said in one of her interviews.
”I know you don’t love me but you have been a true friend & for that I’m [grateful],” she wrote. ”Have a good life & don’t blame this on yourself. I was always [too] sensitive to live in this world.”
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