American actress Tanya Roberts was born on October 15, 1955 and grew up in the Bronx in New York City. She is best known for her roles in Charlie’s Angels, Sheena, and That 70s Show. The daughter of an Irish-American pen seller and Jewish-American, her parents divorced before she reached high school. At the age of 15, she married psychology student Barry Roberts whom she met while waiting in line for a movie. They hitchhiked for a while across the Untied States. After the marriage was annulled, she moved back to New York to pursue work as an actress and model. She entered the Actors Studio with Lee Stresberg and Uta Hagen.
Roberts started off as a model with television advertisements for Ultra Brite, Clairol, and Cool ray sunglasses. She also dabbled in theater, such as in off-Broadway productions Picnic and Antigone. She was a dance instructor for Arthur Murray, before finally making his film debut in the 1975 thriller Forced Entry, which was shortly followed by the 1976 comedy The Yum-Yum Girls. The following year, she and her screenwriter-husband moved to Hollywood and she bagged a role on the drama Fingers, the 1979 cult-movie Tourist Trap, and California Dreaming.
In 1980, Roberts landed a very coveted role, as she was picked from among 2000 candidates to be one of the Charlie’s Angels trio. Despite turning out to be the last season of the series, it catapulted her to mainstream popularity, even gracing the cover of People Magazine in September 1981. She appeared as Kiri in the 1982 feature The Beastmaster. She then had a nude pictorial in Playboy to promote the movie. Her other screets include Murder Me, Murder You, Mike Hammer, Sheena: Queen of the Jungle, and A View to a Kill. In 1998, she landed a role on a series That 70s Show, which introduced her to a bigger audience.