Tanya Roberts' partner shares poignant last photos of the Bond girl

Smiling at her beloved pet dogs Socks and Muttley and posing in a mask with her African Grey parrot named Birdie perched on her head, these are the poignant final photos of Bond girl Tanya Roberts.

Tanya, 65, passed away at 9.30pm last night after being rushed to Cedars Sinai hospital in Beverly Hills after collapsing at her Laurel Canyon home in the early hours of Christmas Eve.

Her death, due to a previously undiagnosed urinary tract infection, was mistakenly announced on Sunday and she eventually died 24 hours later.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, her civil partner Lance O’Brian, 62, told how ‘the love of my life’ had been ‘as healthy as a horse’ before her collapse and had only begun to feel ill on December 23. 

Suffering from shortness of breath and a mild cough, O’Brian said Tanya – who was best known for her role opposite the late Roger Moore in A View To A Kill – initially thought she might have Covid-19.

He booked her a test for the following day but she never made it: at four in the morning, she fell out of bed and was taken to hospital where a urinary tract infection was diagnosed.

Devastated O’Brian said she then began to deteriorate rapidly as the infection spread to her liver, kidneys and gallbladder, and finally, her blood.

By the time he was allowed into hospital to see her, Tanya was dying – able to blink once at him as he held her in his arms the day before she passed away.

He said: ‘I’m beyond out of my mind. I lost my soulmate. It was unexpected. She was as healthy as a horse.

‘She hikes four miles a day, five days a week in these hills. She takes care of herself physically and she’s gone. And I couldn’t see her.’

O’Brian and Tanya had been together for 18 years – first meeting
when they both worked for Tahiti Village, a Las Vegas resort, she as a spokesmodel. 

He said: ‘She was a spokesperson for a resort I worked for in Las Vegas. She would do our TV and radio promotions – it was her and Alan Cook.

‘Then we just got along and got along and got along and the business went out of business but we stayed in business.

‘I’ve lived in this house with her for the last 15 years. She was beyond the love of my life and I’m just so devastated right now.’ 

O’Brian said they have barely spent a night apart since he moved in and told how she would call and ask when he was coming home when he had to spend nights away on business trips. 

He said: ‘We haven’t been apart for 15 years. Once in a blue moon, I’d go to Vegas for the night and she’d be on the phone at six in the morning asking if I was on the flight or if I was on the road back home yet.’

Because Tanya wasn’t close to her older sister Barbara, 68, the couple spent most of their time living a quiet life together that revolved around their pet dogs and her fans. 

Over the last year, Tanya had been conducting Saturday Zoom calls with her fans, which O’Brian says was something she would look forward to all week.

Much of the rest of the time was spent hiking: four miles a day, five days a week in the striking Hollywood Hills close to her Laurel Canyon home.

O’Brian said: ‘She was the epitome of health. She would hike the Hollywood Hills five days a week.

‘She was talking when I called 911. Next thing I know, she’s in intensive care on oxygen and she’s extremely sick.’

He describes her final days as traumatic and said he is angry that he wasn’t allowed to be with her, apart from during their final visit.

He said: ‘After she left here [their home], I never saw her again apart from saying goodbye to her at the hospital.

‘I wasn’t allowed to talk with her. The doctors, the nurses are overwhelmed and they work 12 hour shifts so you never get to speak to the same person. You don’t have a reference point.’

He added: ‘She’s waking up not in her own bed, not around her animals, around strangers who are calling her Victoria [her birth name].

‘People don’t realize how full up these hospitals are. I’m convinced, if I was there talking to Tanya, she’d still be here.

‘She had tubes up her nose and throat and they kept calling her Victoria – she hasn’t been called that since she was a teenager. You can’t get anything past these people – it’s so busy, I can’t begin to tell you what an awful, terrible experience it was.’

O’Brian says he sympathizes with the pressure medical staff are under due to the pandemic but is convinced it played a role in Tanya’s death.

He said: ‘I think Covid played a big part in it – if you called the hospital, it sounded like something out of [sitcom] M.A.S.H.

‘The operating scenes, ‘need more plasma, need more blood’. It’s horrifying. And now I’ve lost the woman I love and I wasn’t able to see her and spend time with her every day. I couldn’t even talk to her because she had tubes down her throat.

‘Seeing her eyes and seeing her struggle to open them for me, that last time I saw her – it was the most terrible thing in the world.’

He says he now hopes to take some time out to grieve and is beginning to plan a memorial service for her friends and family to attend.

‘I’m planning a memorial but she just passed away – I’m trying to get hold of people but it’s hard. I’m not going to do it for the next 48 hours because I need time to grieve.’

O’Brian added: ‘The happy memories make it harder. The dogs are missing their mom – they’re heartsore. It’s been tough. I’ve had a lot of wellwishers and that’s been welcome.’ 

In addition to being a Bond Girl, Roberts starred in the fifth and final season of Charlie’s Angels between 1980 and 1981. 

She is also famous for playing Midge Pinciotti in the hit sitcom, That 70s Show, appearing alongside Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis. 

Roberts was born Victoria Leigh Blum in October 1955 in New York City, before starting her career as a fashion model in her late teens.

She married Barry Roberts when she was just 19 in 1974, and started studying to become an actress at The Actors Studio with Lee Strasberg and Uta
Hagen. 

The leggy blonde made her film debut in 1975’s Forced Entry.