James Bond star Tanya Roberts’ partner was seen breaking down on camera after he found out mid-interview with a media outlet that she is still alive, hours after her representative issued a statement that said the actress had died on Sunday.
“Now, you are telling me she’s alive?” Lance O’Brien, who identifies himself as Roberts’ long-time partner, said on the call while he was in the middle of an interview with the newsmagazine Inside Edition on Monday.
“The hospital is telling me she is alive. They are calling me from the ICU team,” said O’Brien to the interviewer in studio as he broke down in tears.
The news of her being alive took everybody by surprise a day after the former Bond actress’s publicist, Mike Pingel, mistakenly announced that the 65-year-old was dead on 3 January and media organisations ran the news. Obituaries also poured in for the former actress.
Her publicist announced she collapsed near her home in the Hollywood Hills while walking her dogs on Christmas Eve and was rushed to Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. She remained on ventilator since 24 December.
However, her condition still remains “very dire”.
«Currently, it’s not looking good,» Pingel told People.com of Roberts’ health. «It’s very dire. Hold her in your prayers.»
Her publicist said he came to know the tragic news from her partner O’Brien, who told media he was with her in her final moments.
“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 said after he visited her at the hospital before she passed.
He said the hospital staff told him she “had no hope to live”.
The 65-year-old starred as Bond actress Stacey Sutton opposite the late Roger Moore in 1985’s A View to a Kill. It was Roger Moore’s seventh and last Bond film. She also starred in the fifth and final season of Charlie’s Angels.
Roberts, whose real name is Born Victoria Leigh Blum, had an early career in modelling and television adverts before appearing in the 1975 horror film Forced Entry.
