Yesterday the world mourned the loss of actress Tanya Roberts. But in a bizarre twist, it has now been reported that the former Bond girl is actually still alive.
Global media outlets reported yesterday that the star, whose birth name is Victoria Leigh Blum, collapsed after returning home from a walk with her dogs on Christmas Eve. Her representative and friend Mike Pingel told entertainment site tmz.com that the actress, who is best known for playing Bond girl Stacey Sutton in A View to a Kill as well as Julie Rogers in Charlie’s Angels, was taken to hospital and put on a ventilator, but her condition did not improve and she died on December 24.
Her death was not thought to be Covid-19-related, tmz.com reported.
As well as being a famously beautiful Bond girl, Roberts had a long-running role in hit US sitcom That ’70s Show, as well as making appearances in dozens of B-movies and having had a lengthy career as a magazine and TV model.
Her representative Pingel subsequently confirmed the news of her death in a post on Roberts’ official Facebook page, writing: “I’m very sad to have to post this. Yes, Tanya passed away today. I’m heartbroken”. Pingel also spoke to US TV news channel CNN, telling the station that he’d been friends with Roberts for more than 20 years and that he was devastated by her death.
Roberts’ husband Lance O’Brien had reportedly informed Pingel of the actress’ passing, saying, according to tmz.com, that “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”.
But now Pingel has backtracked, telling People magazine in the afternoon of January 4 in the US that Roberts was “alive at 10 am this morning“. Despite O’Brien having apparently been with Roberts as she breathed her last, Pingel said that O’Brien had since received from the hospital to tell him that his wife was not, in fact, dead.
“Currently, it’s not looking good,” Pingel added in his interview with People. “It’s very dire. Hold her in your prayers.”
As strange as the news surrounding Roberts’ condition appears, she is not the only person to have been mistakenly thought to have died in recent days.
A former beauty queen from the US made headlines earlier this week after she ‘came back to life’ after a near-death experience with Covid-19. According to a WJLA report, Barbara Guthrie Lay, a former Miss Virginia, was pronounced dead on December 22 as a result of a Covid-19 infection.
The 82-year-old reportedly contracted the virus from her next-door neighbour and was taken to hospital after she experienced breathing difficulties. Two days later, her husband Tony Lay received the call from the hospital to inform him that she had passed away. As he made several tearful phone calls to friends and family to tell them of his wife’s passing, he received a second call from the hospital to say that Guthrie Lay was not, in fact, dead and had a pulse.
“I was overjoyed and tearful again,” her husband told WJLA. “I went from being miserable and brokenhearted to overjoyed.”