Bond girl and Charlies Angels star Tanya Roberts dies aged 65 – The Guardian

Tanya Roberts, the glamorous actor who starred opposite Roger Moore in the 1985 Bond film A View to A Kill as well as taking over one of the principal roles in the final series of hit TV show Charlie’s Angels, has died aged 65. Her representative confirmed the news to the Hollywood Reporter, saying she had collapsed while walking near her home in Los Angeles.

In A View to a Kill, Roberts was given a substantial role as geologist Stacey Sutton, Bond’s principal love interest and a key ally in the battle against Christopher Walken’s villainous industrialist Max Zorin. By then she had already consolidated her on-screen appeal by appearing in the 1980-81 season of detective series Charlie’s Angels, taking over from Shelley Hack as one of the three title characters.

Born Victoria Leigh Blum, Roberts carved out a career as a model before moving to Hollywood with her screenwriter husband, Barry Roberts. She secured a string of small roles, including James Toback’s 1978 drama Fingers and waxwork slasher Tourist Trap. After winning the Charlie’s Angels role her profile increased, and she was cast as slave girl Kiri in cult fantasy-horror The Beastmaster (1982) and as the title role in the Tarzan-style adventure Sheena: Queen of the Jungle, released in 1984 and which has also become a cult film despite its disastrous initial reception.

Roberts disliked the “Bond girl” label, telling the Daily Mail that it pigeonholed her as a “dumb, glamorous broad” and that “the reason most Bond girls don’t go on to have careers [is] because people just don’t take them seriously”. But she said she did not regret taking the role: “At the time I didn’t know what I know now, and to be honest, who would turn that role down, really? Nobody would … I was very young and I did what I felt was the right choice to make.”

A View to a Kill did not, as Roberts correctly suggested, lead to a career transformation: she found herself playing in “erotic thrillers” such as Night Eyes, Inner Sanctum, and Sins of Desire, and TV series such as Hot Line (also with an “erotic” slant).

However, in 1998 she was cast in a long-running role in retro sitcom That ’70s Show, as dim-bulb Midge Pinciotti, appearing in more than 80 episodes. Her husband’s terminal illness, and subsequent death in 2006, led her to retire from acting.