Tanya Roberts
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| Tanya Roberts | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Victoria Leigh Blum |
| Born | October 15 1954 Bronx, New York City, U.S. |
| Spouse(s) | ? (annulled) Barry Roberts (1974-2006) |
| Official site | None |
Victoria Leigh Blum - better known as Tanya Roberts (born on October 15, 1954) is an American actress best known for her roles in Charlie's Angels, The Beastmaster, A View to a Kill, Sheena and That '70s Show.
Reportedly 5' 8" (1.73 m) tall and with measurements of 36-21-34, Roberts was regarded as one of Hollywood's most popular sex symbols during the early 1980s.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life and career
Roberts grew up in the Bronx, New York City. The daughter of an Irish American pen seller and a Jewish American woman, her parents divorced before she reached high school. Her sister, actress Barbara Chase, was married to Timothy Leary from 1978 to 1992.
At age 15, she abandoned her studies to get married and lived for a while hitch-hiking across the United States until her mother-in-law annulled the union. Roberts continued to live in New York City, modelling and working as a dance teacher with Arthur Murray.
After meeting psychology student Barry Roberts while waiting in line for a movie, she soon married again, having proposed to him in a subway station. While Barry started a career as a screenwriter, Tanya began to study at the Actors' Studio with Lee Strasberg and Uta Hagen.
Starting out, Roberts landed several television commercials for Ultra Brite, Clairol and Cool Ray sunglasses, and played serious roles in the off-Broadway productions Picnic and Antigone. She continued to support herself as an Arthur Murray dance instructor. Her film debut was the 1975 thriller Forced Entry, with Nancy Allen. This was followed in 1976 by the comedy The Yum-Yum Girls.
In 1977, as her husband was securing his own screenwriting career, the couple moved to Hollywood. The following year, Roberts filmed the drama Fingers, co-starring Harvey Keitel, Tisa Farrow, Jim Brown and Danny Aiello. A role in the 1979 cult-movie Tourist Trap with Chuck Connors followed. Also in 1979, she appeared in the movies Racket (with Bjorn Borg), and California Dreaming.
Roberts also featured in several television pilots that were never picked up: Pleasure Cove, the comedy Zuma Beach (1978, by Lee H. Katzin, co-written by Halloween director John Carpenter), and Waikiki (1980).
[edit] The 1980s
In 1980, Roberts was chosen among 2,000 candidates to replace Shelley Hack in Charlie's Angels in what later turned out to be the last season of the series. In the show, Roberts interpreted her character Julie Rogers as a streetwise fighter who used her fists more than her gun.
After this, her popularity exploded. She was the cover of People magazine (September 7, 1981) and was offered more ambitious projects, though it could be argued that this was due to her good looks rather than her acting talent.
In 1982, she played Kiri in the sword and sorcery movie The Beastmaster (by Don Coscarelli, creator of the Phantasm franchise) with Marc Singer. She also appeared in Playboy to help promote the movie, appearing on that issue's cover (October 1982).
In 1983, Roberts filmed the little-known adventure Paladini-storia d'armi e d'amori (Guns and Love Story) in Italy. She also played the role of "Velda", a buxom secretary to private detective Mike Hammer (played by Stacy Keach) in Murder Me, Murder You. This made-for-TV movie was the first of two pilots that kicked off the syndicated television series Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer. Roberts declined to continue the role in the Mike Hammer series - where she was replaced by Lindsay Bloom - in order to film her next project, Sheena: Queen of the Jungle (by John Guillermin). The 1984 film was based on a character adapted from a Will Eisner's comic book. Dressed in scantily clad costumes, Sheena also introduced a new blonde hairstyle that Roberts would keep for the rest of her career. The movie was a box office disaster and was mauled by the critics. Her subsequent appearance as Bond girl Stacey Sutton in A View to a Kill was similarly missable.
After a brief break she appeared in Body Slam (1987), an action movie set in the professional wrestling world. Roberts closed out the decade with the 1989 Purgatory, a film about the life of imprisoned women.
[edit] The 1990s
By 1990, satisfying roles began to dry up and Roberts started to film erotic thrillers for cable television, often competing with then-current star of the genre Shannon Tweed.
In 1990's Night Eyes, she was zealously watched over by her husband, but ends up having an affair with the detective (played by Andrew Stevens) who was following her. Her 1991 film Inner Sanctum became one of the biggest hits of the genre and was successful on video rental shelves. In 1992, she played Kay Egan in Sins of Desire.
Roberts also appeared on the Hot Line television series (1994) and the video game The Pandora Directive (1996).
In 1998, her career had a resurgence, and she became familiar to younger audiences when she took on the role of Midge Pinciotti on That '70s Show. In a recent interview on E! True Hollywood Story discussing That '70s Show, Roberts said she left the series in 2001 because her husband had become ill, but gave no details of his condition. The Internet Movie Database, however, reports that Barry Roberts died on June 15, 2006, after a four year battle with encephalitis. He and Tanya had been married for 32 years.
[edit] The 2000s
After leaving That '70s Show, Roberts has been heard on radio and seen on television as the spokesperson for several Las Vegas, Nevada timeshare companies, notably Soleil and Tahiti Village. Roberts does commercials on a wide variety of radio stations and programs for Consolidated Resorts.
[edit] External links
- Tanya Roberts at the Internet Movie Database
- Tanya Roberts at TV.com
- YouTube Sheena Clips
- Sheena, Queen of the Jungle (Fan Site}
- Tanya Roberts Images (Google)de:Tanya Roberts
fr:Tanya Roberts ja:タニア・ロバーツ pl:Tanya Roberts sr:Тања Робертс sv:Tanya Roberts th:ทันย่า โรเบิตส์
