Tanya Roberts, the glamorous actress opposite Roger Moore in the 1985 Bond film, A View to A Kill, in addition to taking on one of the leading roles in the final series for the TV show Charlie’s Angels, died at age 65. the news to the Hollywood Reporter, saying she passed out while walking near her Los Angeles home.
In A View to a Kill, Roberts was given a substantial role as geologist Stacey Sutton, Bond’s primary love interest and a key ally in the battle against Christopher Walken’s industrial villain, Max Zorin. By that time, she had already consolidated her on-screen appeal by appearing in the 1980-81 season of the detective series Charlie’s Angels, replacing Shelley Hack as one of the three title characters.
Born Victoria Leigh Blum, Roberts made a career as a model before moving to Hollywood with her husband, screenwriter, Barry Roberts. She landed a number of small roles, including the drama of James Toback, Fingers, and the wax terrorist Tourist Trap. After winning the role of Charlie’s Angels, her profile increased, and she was cast as the slave Kiri in the fantasy horror cult The Beastmaster (1982) and as the title role in the Tarzan-style adventure Sheena: Queen of the Jungle, released in 1984 and which also became a cult film, despite its initial disastrous reception.
Roberts didn’t like the “Bond girl” label, telling the Daily Mail that he called her a “dumb and glamorous girl” and that “the reason that most Bond girls don’t pursue a career [is] because people just don’t take them seriously ”. But she said she didn’t regret taking the role: “At the time I didn’t know what I know now, and to be honest, who would really refuse that role? Nobody would … I was very young and I did what I thought was the right choice ”.
View to a Kill did not lead, as Roberts correctly suggested, to a career transformation: she found herself playing on “erotic thrillers” like Night Eyes, Inner Sanctum and Sins of Desire, and on TV series like Hot Line (also with “erotic” inclination).
However, in 1998 she was cast in a long-running role on the retro sitcom That ’70s Show, as the dim-bulb Midge Pinciotti, appearing in more than 80 episodes. Her husband’s terminal illness and subsequent death in 2006 prompted her to retire as an actor.