Tanya Roberts’s partner has explained how the actor’s death came to be wrongly announced by her publicist.
On Sunday (3 January), a press release was sent out to media organisations saying that the former Bond girl had died aged 65 in hospital after collapsing on Christmas Eve.
However, late on Monday (4 January) evening, TMZ reported that her husband Lance O’Brien had received a call from doctors saying that Roberts was still alive.
Speaking to Page Six, O’Brien explained that the miscommunication had occurred after “blubbering” to Roberts’s representative over the phone about an “end of life” visit with her in the hospital.
“He goes, ‘What happened?’ And I say, ‘I just said goodbye to Tanya, and I got to see her beautiful eyes one last time.’ And after that, I’m just blubbering,” O’Brien said.
“Next thing I know, TMZ, OMG, is on my cell phone.”
Insisting that he didn’t want to blame her publicist in “any way, shape or form”, O’Brien said that he truly believed Roberts had died.
However, O’Brien says that doctors have since taken Roberts off life support and have told him that there’s “no chance” she’ll make it.
“For all intents and purposes, she was gone,’’ he said. “She’s been out of it the last three days.”
Born Victoria Leigh Blum, Roberts had an early career in modelling and television adverts before appearing in the 1975 horror film Forced Entry.
Her most notable film role is as Stacey Sutton, an American geologist who becomes targeted by villain Max Zorin (Christopher Walken), in Roger Moore’s final Bond film A View to a Kill.
