Bond girl Tanya Roberts DIES day after premature death announcement

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Bond girl Tanya Roberts has died just 24 hours after her partner and rep prematurely said she passed away while she was fighting for her life in the ICU.  

Obituaries for the 65-year-old former Charlie’s Angels star were published across the world on Monday after her agent informed the media that she had died at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles on Sunday.

But in an emotional interview the following afternoon her partner Lance O’Brien broke down in tears as he received a phone call from the hospital.

‘Now, you are telling me she’s alive?’ O’Brien said, his face torn in anguish. 

Sobbing, he told Inside Edition: ‘The hospital is telling me she is alive. They are calling me from the ICU team.’ 

TMZ reports O’Brien has now confirmed Roberts died Monday night just after 9pm. 

She had been suffering from an unspecified illness which caused liver and kidney failure.  

Roberts, who had spent the day walking her dogs, complained of feeling unwell on Christmas Eve and collapsed in the night on the way to the bathroom. 

She was rushed to hospital, where she tested negative for coronavirus, and was placed on a ventilator before her condition rapidly deteriorated. 

O’Brien said he went to hospital on Sunday after doctors said the actress was fading fast and that she was going to die, TMZ reported. He said she opened her eyes and tried to grab him but that her eyes then closed again and she ‘faded’.

Having said what he believed was his final words to her, he was left devastated and walked out of the hospital without speaking to medical staff.

On the same day, he appeared to claim that he had watched Roberts’ ‘last moments’ and hours later news of her ‘death’ was being reported around the world.  

He has since attempted to explain the confusion over how the death announcement came about and says he ‘doesn’t know’ who to blame for the mix-up. The hospital has refused to comment on the case because of patient confidentiality.

‘I turn around and she’s completely passed out cold,’ he told The Sun in a description of his harrowing visit to her bedside. ‘I thought that was that, she wasn’t going to recover.

‘So when I came down the elevator I was distraught, I was lost, I was completely discombobulated. There was nobody there to guide me. I called her publicist Mike Pingel and I said I just said goodbye to Tanya.’   

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Pingel later issued a press release saying that Roberts – best known for appearing opposite Roger Moore in the 1985 Bond film A View To Kill – had died. 

He explained: ‘Lance truly believed Tanya had died.’ 

The rep said he’d learned the news of Roberts’ ‘death’ from O’Brien, who told TMZ that he visited her at the hospital before she passed.  

‘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,’ O’Brien said Sunday.

‘When she saw me and I was there, I saw her eyes open up. I felt good. I said: “Hey, her eyes are opening. Her eyes are opening.” They told me that’s just a reflex.’ 

Then on Monday Pingel announced that the hospital had called O’Brien and informed him that Roberts was alive – as seen in the Inside Edition video. 

By Tuesday it was confirmed Roberts had died in the hospital.  

Asked about the mix-up, a spokesperson for Cedars Sinai would only say: ‘Due to patient confidentiality we cannot confirm or deny that anyone is a patient at Cedars Sinai.’

Speaking prior to her death Pingel said that Roberts’ condition was ‘dire’. 

O’Brien told The Sun: ‘Her kidneys are so far gone, her liver is so far gone, her gall bladder is so far gone. She also has a terrible blood infection. The doctors say it started out with a urinary tract infection.

‘The doctors say there’s no way she’s going to be the same. She always told me she didn’t want to be an invalid. She said if it got to this stage, end it for me.’

He said that he was unable to return to the hospital because he would need special permission due to the pandemic.

O’Brien said he had told doctors not to keep her on life support just so that he could see her: ‘I have seen her already, I got to hold her.’

He explained how sudden her illness had been, that Roberts was incredibly fit and would go hiking in the hills for up to four miles each day.

Roberts complained of feeling unwell on Christmas Eve and told O’Brien she wanted him to take her for a covid test the following day.

But early in the morning at around 4am she collapsed on her way to the bathroom and as Lance tried to pick her up she was unable to control her legs or her arms.

An ambulance was called and she was admitted but O’Brien was not allowed to visit.

Her coronavirus test was negative and he was later able to speak to Roberts on the phone. She told him that she was on 50 percent oxygen, which was an improvement to the 90 percent air she was breathing earlier.

‘So I’m figuring she’s going to be home in a day or two,’ O’Brien told The Sun.

The next day things improved further, with O’Brien informed that Roberts might need a colostomy bag for her kidneys for four to six weeks but that she could return home.

But he added: ‘Then they tell me she’s not going to get out of this, it’s end of life and if you are gong to come see her, come see her.’ 

O’Brien remains confused about how he came to believe she was dead, saying that he was often speaking to different medics and, not being able to visit, it was hard to understand the time-frame when her prognosis was being relayed to him.  

TMZ said it heard from several sources close to the family who claimed O’Brien called them with news of Roberts’ death on Sunday. 

The outlet had originally reported that Roberts collapsed after she returned home from walking her dog on December 24. 

Before her collapse, insiders said Roberts seemed ‘perfectly healthy’ and was participating in video chats with her fans.  

It’s unclear if and when O’Brien and Roberts tied the knot but reports indicated that the pair lived together at her home in Hollywood Hills.  

Public records indicate that it was the same home Robert’s shared with her first husband, screenwriter Barry Roberts, who died in 2006. Tanya and Barry had been married for 32 years and had no children. 

In addition to being a Bond Girl, Roberts starred in the fifth and final season of Charlie’s Angels between 1980 and 1981. 

She is also famous for playing Midge Pinciotti in the hit sitcom, That 70s Show, appearing alongside Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis. 

Roberts was born Victoria Leigh Blum in October 1955 in New York City, before starting her career as a fashion model in her late teens.

She married Barry Roberts when she was just 19 in 1974, and started studying to become an actress at The Actors Studio with Lee Strasberg and Uta Hagen. 

The leggy blonde made her film debut in 1975’s Forced Entry.  

Roberts and her husband relocated permanently to Los Angeles in 1977, which paid off in a big way three years later.

The beauty was chosen above 2,000 other actresses to replace Shelley Hack in the fifth and final season of Charlie’s Angels, which aired between 1980 and 1981. 

However, she became a global sensation several years later, when she was elevated to ‘Bond girl’ status in 1985’s A View To A Kill.

In that film, she starred as sultry geologist Stacey Sutton alongside Roger Moore in his seventh and final James Bond movie.

Afterward, Roberts continued to work regularly with roles in films such as Body Slam, Twisted Justice, Purgatory and Legal Tender, which was written by her husband. 

In 1998, she returned to the small screen to play Midge in That 70s Show. 

The hit Fox sitcom also starred Ashton Kutcher, Mila Kunis, Wilmer Valderrama and Topher Grace. 

She left the show in 2004 to take care of her husband who was terminally ill at the time. He tragically passed away two years later. 

Roberts did not appear in any more films or television shows following her first husband’s death. 

However, the beauty appeared to be looking healthy and in good spirits late last year. 

She frequently uploaded photos to Instagram, including a snap that showed her wearing a mask amid the COVID-19 pandemic as she signed fan photographs.