Actress Tanya Roberts is not dead, despite publicist initially claiming otherwise

Actress Tanya Roberts, best known as the Bond girl in A View to a Kill, is alive, despite her rep previously announcing her death.  

On Monday, Roberts rep, Mike Pingel, explained that the husband of the ailing actress informed him of her passing on Jan. 3. The veteran Hollywood star had been hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after collapsing in her home on Christmas Eve. The husband, Lance O’Brien, reportedly told Pingel that his wife seemed “to slip away” as he held her and that she “died in my arms.”

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“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 shared with TMZ on Sunday. He said his wife did not have COVID but was placed on a ventilator because she was struggling to breathe.

Pingel also issued a statement about her passing, which was widely reported by several publications. Much to his surprise, however, he received a call from the hospital Monday morning saying Roberts was very much alive, but in  “poor condition,” according to the Associated Press, per Deadline.

“She was alive at 10 a.m. this morning,” Pingel says, adding that Roberts husband also “received a call from the hospital saying she was not dead.”

O’Brien was being interviewed by Inside Edition when the hospital called to tell him his wife was still alive. 

“Now you’re telling me that she’s alive?” O’Brien said on the show. “Thank the Lord. Thank God.”

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Roberts (born Victoria Leigh Blum) had a successful modelling career before she made her film debut in 1975 with The Last Victim. She appeared in several commercials and landed a Playboy cover in 1982. Her television credits include That ’70s Show and ABC’s Charlie’s Angels. Roberts also starred in the fantasy films The Beastmaster (1982) and Sheena: Queen of the Jungle (1984), as well as the comedy Body Slam (1987) and the thriller Night Eyes (1990).

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