Tanya Roberts was born Victoria Leigh Blum in 1949 (although long given as 1955) in
Manhattan, New York City, to Oscar Blum and his wife Dorothy (née Smith). Oscar Maximilian Blum was born in New York City. Oscar's father,
Theodor Blum, did pioneering work in local anesthesia and the use of X-rays in dental care. Theodor was born in
Vienna, Austria, and immigrated to New York in 1904. In 1940, Roberts's father was working as an assistant manager for a music publishing house in New York City. He married Dorothy Leigh Smith from
Oldham, England, in
Weymouth, England, in 1945. In April 1945, at the age of 22, Dorothy arrived in New York City. In 1948, Dorothy returned to New York from a trip to England with Roberts's two-year-old sister, Barbara. Roberts's father was of Jewish descent and her mother was of English or Irish descent. It has also been erroneously reported that her father was of Irish descent and her mother was Jewish. She had one older sister, Barbara. The 1950 U.S. Census shows that, as of April 1950, the Blum family lived in the hamlet of Hewlett in Hempstead, NY and that Oscar Blum was a sales executive for a pen manufacturer. Later in the same month in 1958 Roberts's parents obtained a mortgage to buy a property in neighboring
Greenburgh, New York, and later sold it in July 1961. After meeting psychology student Barry Roberts while waiting in line for a movie, Victoria Blum proposed to him in a subway station and they were soon married in 1973. While Barry pursued a career as a screenwriter, she began to study at the
Actors Studio with
Lee Strasberg and
Uta Hagen under the name Tanya Roberts. ==Career==