Tanya Roberts

Posted on by Tony CrawleyCategories:Actors

 

  1. Bo Derek, 10, 1978.
  2. Daryl Hannah. Splash, 1983.    A mermaid?  Moi? That’s what they  all said, more or less.  Except Debra Winger who longed to be  Madison. (Director Ron Howard did not agree). The full 19 options were… Hannah,  Rosanna Arquette, Jodie Foster (she was booked into The Hotel New Hampshire), General  Hospital  soap queen Genie Francis, Melanie Griffith, Diane Lane, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tatum O’Neal, Michelle Pfeiffer, Molly Ringwald, Tanya Roberts (booked for Sheena: Queen of the Jungle), Ally Sheedy, Brooke Shields (studying French Literature at Princeton), Sharon Stone, Kathleen Turner, Lisa Whelchel (from The Facts of Life, 1979-1988), Debra Winger.  Plus two Brits, Lynne Frederick and Fiona Fullerton – impressive as the daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra, 1970.  Oh and PJ Soles, who was originally chosen to co-star with… Bill Murray – as Disney’s new (“adult”) Touchstone unit rushed Splash into production to beat Warren Beatty’s similar “half-human-half-kipper” tail. Mermaid.
  3. Margaux Hemingway, Vicious Kiss, 1994.   The pitch: Love can be terrifying…  Tanya walked away from the stalker – “an emotionally unstable widow.” Margaux walked in… after some rewrites.  Tanya’s sister, Barbara Chase, was wed to LSD icon, Professor Timothy Leary,  for 15 years.
  4. Roxanne Hart, Highlander, 1985.   Some 16 guys were up for Christophe(r) Lambert’s immortal clansman, Connor McLeod.  But as many as 24 women for  Brenda Wyatt, the modern-day forensics cop bedded by him. Brooke Adams… who must have felt  she had as great chance, having already successfully partnered Connery in The Great Train Robbery, 1978, and Cuba, 1979. Her rivals  were  Karen Allen, Rosanna Arquette, Jennifer Beals, Lorraine Bracco, Elisabeth Brooks, Kate Capshaw, Glenn Close, Lisa Eilbacher, Linda Fiorentino, Kim Greist (Terry Gilliam’s huge Brazil error), Linda Hamilton, Diane Lane, Carolyn McCormick, Demi Moore, Annette O’Toole, Elizabeth Perkins, Tanya Roberts (booked for   007’s View to a Kill),  Annabella Sciorra, Diane Venora, Sela Ward, Sigourney Weaver and (phew!) Sean Young.   Broadway’s rank outsider won!
  5. Lauren Koslow, Days of Our Lives, TV, 1996-2020.  Tanya tested as Kate Roberts in the new daytime soap. Boston’s Koslow nabbed it and was still Kate Roberts (then DiMera, then Brady)… 2,150 shows later.  Meantime Tanya achieved the rarity of being a Bond Girl (in A View To A Kill with Roger Moore) and the last of  the first Charlie’s Angels. Not forgetting Sheena, 1984, on-screen and in one of the most revealing stills ever given me by Columbia Pictures. She made various soft-bore films, choreographing her sex scenes, one in Inner Sanctum, 1991, was cut for being too graphic.  What else when her 1997 debut was …The Yum Yum  Girls

    Footnote>>>  Poor Tanya was reported dead one day before she died… Her  publicist Mike Pingel announced her demise on January  3, 2021.  He  retracted his statement the next morning … only to  have the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center confirm the  death later in the  day of January 4.   She was 65.

  6.  

 

 

 Birth year: 1955Death year: 2021Other name: Casting Calls:  5