Following a day of conflicting information about the status of her health, Tanya Roberts has died at the age of 65. TMZ was the first to report the news. Roberts passed away on Monday evening at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles from a urinary tract infection that “spread to her kidney, gallbladder, liver, and then blood stream,†her representative, Mike Pingel, said in a statement to Vulture. The actress had collapsed while taking her dogs for a walk and was admitted to the hospital on December 24, where she remained on a ventilator. “The family ask for privacy as they mourn her death,†Pingel added. An online memorial is being planned and will be “announced shortly.â€
Making her screen debut in the 1976 horror film The Last Victim, originally titled Forced Entry, Roberts is best known for her turns as Julie Rogers on ABC’s Charlie’s Angels, joining the show in its fifth season to replace an exiting Shelley Hack, and as a Bond girl, portraying geologist Stacey Sutton in 1985’s A View to a Kill opposite Roger Moore’s James Bond. Roberts also appeared in films such as The Beastmaster, Sheena: Queen of the Jungle, and Body Slam. In 1998, the actress was cast as ditzy Midge Pinciotti, the mother to Laura Prepon’s sardonic teenager Donna, in Fox’s That ’70s Show. She left the series in 2001 to care for her terminally ill husband, Barry Roberts, who passed away in 2006. Roberts last appeared in an episode of Showtime’s TV adaptation of Barbershop in 2005.
Roberts’s passing was first reported on January 3, only to be reversed on January 4. Her representative and friend, Pingel, prematurely declared her death to the media because of an astounding communication error: Pingel said that Roberts’s partner, Lance O’Brien, told him on Sunday that she had passed away. However, O’Brien received a call on Monday morning from the hospital saying Roberts was indeed still alive. (Yeah, we don’t know how that happened either.) “As I held her in her last moments, she opened her eyes,†O’Brien previously said about their final interaction. “I was able to see her beautiful eyes one last time.†Pingel added to TMZ that O’Brien told him he “truly believed†Roberts had died.