Interview in a lift with sultry redhead

Press, 1 June 1985, Page 7

Interview in a lift with sultry redhead

By

Richard Freedman,

Newshouse News Service New York When the sultry redhead, Tanya Roberts, was working on the latest James Bond film, “A View to A Kill,” last year, she was living with her husband of 10 years, the screenwriter Barry Roberts, in a townhouse in Eaton Place, London. Eaton Place is where the much-loved television series, “Upstairs Downstairs,” took place. The Roberts were definitely “upstairs,” but since the hail light wasn’t working, a visitor had to use his ingenuity to find the midget elevator up to their flat. In “A View to A Kill,” Tanya plays Stacey Sutton, a San Francisco oil heiress and professional geologist who helps Roger Moore, as British Secret agent 007, foil a diabolical plot to flood the San Andreas fault, thus causing multiple earthquakes. A former “Charlie’s Angel,” Tanya could cause quite a few earthquakes herself. “I got the call from Cubby Broccoli, producer of the Bond movies, to do Stacey on the basis of The Beastmaster,” she says as

we cram ourselves into the elevator to take off for a trendy Italian restaurant in South Kensington.

The size of the elevator is such that if husband Barry weren’t aboard, merely being in it would constitute grounds for adultery. “It’s a lovely part because Stacey’s bright, spunky, and feminine-” But is there a life after being a Bond girl? “The Bond movies are a wonderful showcase. Look at Maude Adams and Kim Bassinger, who started out as Bond girls. It didn’t hurt their careers any. “Besides, I decided I’d like to be in a hit for a change. I haven’t been in this business 14 years just sucking my thumbs, and I’m not letting movies like Sheena get me down. Look at Jessica Lange — she was laughed out of Hollywood for King Kong, but she didn’t let that stop her.” In “Sheena, Queen of the Jungle,” Tanya co-starred with a horse painted to look like a zebra. She would just as soon forget the entire experience. f ‘lt was a disaster that could have been a great movie, if they had stuck to the original script and gone with the love story. But they didn’t go for romance, they

took a chance and stayed right in the middle.” Miss Roberts is so beautiful, working out I'A hours daily with her bar bells to keep in. shape, that you would think Hollywood might have devised better roles for her than a comicstrip queen of the jungle. “Good looks are curiously held against you in Hollywood, because they’re thought to be unrealistic. But people don’t go to the movies for realism; they want escape. Hollywood has changed over the years, and not for the better. Look at the movies they made in 1939 i— ‘Gone With the Wind,’ “The Wizard of Oz,’ ‘Wuthering Heights,’ ‘Stagecoach,’ and ‘Ninotchka’ — and tell me they’ve gotten better since then.

“Say what you will about Sam Goldwyn, he loved movies. Now the conglomerates have taken over, not for love but for money. The only recent movies I can think of that I really loved are ‘Tootsie’ and ‘My Favourite Year.’ I’m not interested any more in making movies about people hitting puberty.”

Appropriately enough, Tanya, who had been briefly married at 15, met her present husband the next

year while waiting on line to get into a movie. “We were both movie freaks. We had a fight over “The New Centurions,’ and didn’t speak to each other for a year. We made up over ‘A Safe Place,’ and I proposed to him. Now we’re trying to have a baby after I’ve had two miscarriages.” In 1980 the Roberts moved out to Los Angeles, which after growing up in the Bronx, she considers “very sweet, picturesque and beautiful, like a miniature New York.” “But everything is so slow-paced and laid-back,” she says. “It’s not a city of intrigue or vibrant personality. “If you have the right attitude, New York is the greatest city in the world. But people are afraid they can’t conquer it. I’ve got a lot of drive — a sense of who I am. I want to go on the Broadway stage some day. I’ve already acted in ‘Picnic,’ ‘Antigone’ and ‘Liliom,’ as well as Shaw and Ibsen (plays) but until then, I’m determined to act in serious movies. “I’m not the patient type, but I’ll be patient about that.”