Barry Roberts: Everything About Tanya Roberts’ Husband and Their Marriage

Barry Roberts was the husband of the actress Tanya Roberts, known for Charlie’s Angels, the James Bond film A View to a Kill, and the sitcom That ’70s Show. Their marriage lasted more than three decades, from the early 1970s until his death in 2006, and it shaped the course of her career in a way few Hollywood marriages ever do.

Barry Roberts was not a star himself. He was a psychology student when they met and a screenwriter by trade, and he stayed almost entirely out of the spotlight. This article tells what is documented about him, about how they met, and about the final years in which his wife gave up a hit television show to care for him.

Who Was Barry Roberts?

Barry Roberts was an American screenwriter whose public identity rests almost entirely on his marriage. He gave no famous interviews, he did not act, and no detailed official biography of him was ever published. Reference works that document his wife’s life mention him in only a few lines, and those lines are the solid ground on which any profile of him must stand.

What those sources agree on is the outline. He was a student of psychology in New York when he met the young woman who would become Tanya Roberts. He then built a working life as a scriptwriter, first in New York and then in Hollywood after the couple moved west in 1977. He and his wife remained married for the rest of his life, a span of more than thirty years in an industry where long marriages are rare.

His exact date of birth has not been published in reliable sources, and this article does not guess at it. The same is true of his family background and his early childhood. Websites that offer a full early life for Barry Roberts are filling gaps without evidence, and those details should not be trusted.

A Meeting in a Movie Line and a Proposal in a Subway

The story of how Barry Roberts met his wife is one of the best documented parts of his life, because Tanya Roberts told it herself during her career and it appears in her reference biography and her obituaries. She was born Victoria Leigh Blum, and by her late teens she had already lived an unusual life. She had left school at about fifteen, briefly married as a teenager in a marriage that was soon annulled, and spent time travelling around the country before returning to New York.

Back in New York, she was waiting in line to see a movie when she met Barry Roberts, who was studying psychology at the time. A few months later, in a reversal of the usual story, she proposed to him in a subway station. They were soon married. Most reference sources give the year of the marriage as 1973, while some others give 1974, a small disagreement that has never been settled in public. The honest way to state it is that they married in the early 1970s, with 1973 the date given by her main reference biography.

While Barry pursued his writing, his wife began serious acting study. She trained at the Actors Studio with the famous teachers Lee Strasberg and Uta Hagen and took the professional name Tanya Roberts. She supported herself in those years as an Arthur Murray dance instructor and as a model, and she appeared in television commercials and in off-Broadway plays such as Picnic and Antigone.

Building a Life in Hollywood

In 1977, Barry Roberts was establishing his own career as a screenwriter, and the couple moved to Hollywood. The move was a joint bet on both of their careers, his in writing rooms and hers in front of the camera. Her first roles were small films and television pilots, and her film debut had come in The Last Victim in the mid 1970s.

Her breakthrough arrived in 1980, when she was chosen from around two thousand candidates to join the final season of Charlie’s Angels, playing Julie Rogers. A cover of People magazine followed, and then came the film roles for which she is still remembered: The Beastmaster in 1982, the title role in Sheena in 1984, and the Bond girl role of geologist Stacey Sutton in A View to a Kill in 1985, opposite Roger Moore.

Through all of this, Barry Roberts remained the private half of the couple. One production history of the Bond film notes that he travelled with his wife during filming and was with her in London, France and San Francisco while A View to a Kill was being made. That small detail gives a fair picture of the marriage: he accompanied her on distant locations whenever he could, while his own work stayed behind the scenes.

Details of his own writing credits are thin in public sources. He is described consistently as a screenwriter and television writer, but reliable reference works do not attach a confirmed list of titles to his name. Claims on unofficial sites that credit him with specific well known productions have not been verified, and this article does not repeat them as fact.

The That ’70s Show Years

In 1998, Tanya Roberts took the role that introduced her to a new generation: Midge Pinciotti, the warm and dreamy mother of Donna, in the hit sitcom That ’70s Show. Her performance was praised in her obituaries as knowing and funny, playing a housewife who slowly grows dissatisfied with her narrow life. She was a regular on the show for its first three seasons and appeared in dozens of episodes.

Then, in 2001, she left the series. The reason was not a contract dispute and not a wish for film work. Barry Roberts had become terminally ill, and his wife chose to leave a successful show to care for him at home. That decision is confirmed by her reference biography and by her obituaries in major outlets, and it is the fact for which Barry Roberts is most often remembered by the public.

She returned to the show for a few special guest appearances in 2004, during its sixth and seventh seasons, when his condition allowed her some time away. She retired from acting in 2005. Some later accounts describe his illness as connected with encephalitis, but that specific diagnosis appears only in weaker secondary sources. Stronger sources simply describe a terminal illness, and that is the wording this article uses.

His Death in 2006 and Her Later Years

Barry Roberts died in 2006, after roughly five years of serious illness. His wife had been his carer through those years, and his death ended a marriage that had lasted more than three decades. The couple had no children, a fact confirmed in her reference biography.

Tanya Roberts lived in the Hollywood Hills in California. Some time after Barry’s death, she formed a new relationship with a partner named Lance O’Brien, who was with her at the end of her life. She stayed largely retired, though she remained in touch with fans, and during the pandemic period she hosted video chats with them on social media.

Tanya Roberts died in Los Angeles in January 2021. She had collapsed after a walk in late December 2020 and was taken to Cedars-Sinai Hospital, where doctors found that a urinary tract infection had advanced into sepsis and caused organ failure. Her death was briefly and wrongly announced a day early, which caused confusion in the press, before she passed away on the evening of January 4, 2021, at the age of 71. In a handwritten will, she left her estate to O’Brien.

Her death brought renewed attention to Barry Roberts, because almost every obituary told the same central story: a teenage meeting in a cinema queue, a proposal in a subway station, thirty years of marriage, and a wife who walked away from fame to nurse him at the end.

What Is Not Known About Barry Roberts

An honest profile should end by marking its limits. Barry Roberts’s birth date, his hometown, his parents and his education beyond his psychology studies are not documented in reliable public sources. His full list of writing credits is not confirmed either, and no verified net worth figure exists for him, so this article offers none.

There are also many other men named Barry Roberts in public life, including sportsmen, musicians and business figures. None of them is Tanya Roberts’s husband, and facts about them do not belong in his story. The Barry Roberts of this article is defined by a small, consistent record: a psychology student who became a screenwriter, a husband of more than thirty years, and a man whose final illness showed the strength of the marriage he had built.

FAQs

Who was Barry Roberts?

Barry Roberts was an American screenwriter and the husband of actress Tanya Roberts. He studied psychology before turning to writing, and he remained almost entirely out of the public spotlight throughout his life.

How did Barry Roberts and Tanya Roberts meet?

They met while waiting in line to see a movie in New York, when he was a psychology student. A few months later, she proposed to him in a subway station, and they married soon after, in 1973 according to her main reference biography.

Why did Tanya Roberts leave That ’70s Show?

She left the show in 2001 because Barry Roberts had become terminally ill, and she wanted to care for him at home. She later returned for a few guest appearances in 2004, and he died in 2006.

Did Barry Roberts and Tanya Roberts have children?

No. The couple had no children during their marriage of more than thirty years.

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Final Thoughts

Barry Roberts left no fame of his own, and he seems to have wanted none. What he left was a marriage that lasted from a New York cinema queue in the early 1970s to a quiet home in California in 2006, and a story that still moves people today because of what it showed about loyalty.

When the choice came between a hit television show and a sick husband, Tanya Roberts chose her husband, and she never suggested she regretted it. That choice is the true centre of Barry Roberts’s public story, and it tells readers more about the man than any list of credits could.

Featured photo: Tanya Roberts – public domain photo, via Wikimedia Commons