Soap opera star Andrea Evans has died of breast cancer at age 66, reports USA Today. Fans likely know her best for her roles as Tina Lord on One Life to Live—she was nominated for a Daytime Emmy in 1988 for that one—and as Patty Williams on The Young and the Restless. But she had a long career that also included portraying Tawny Moore on The Bold and the Beautiful, Rebecca Hotchkiss on Passions, and Patty Walker on Amazon Prime's The Bay, notes Deadline. She also earned a second Daytime Emmy nomination for her portrayal of Vivian Price in the web series DeVanity in 2015.
"People often think she must be very like the characters she played on television," former manager Don Carroll tells People. "In reality, her greatest days were spent with no makeup, her hair in pigtails, and a ballcap on her head at Disneyland with her daughter Kylie." The Los Angeles Times notes that Evans' career was nearly derailed in 1990 because of a stalker. She left acting that year and remained mostly out of the public eye for about a decade, per Deadline.
The fear "forever changed me," she told People in a 2008 interview in which she discussed the experience for the first time publicly. "There's no way it could not." She recounts being accosted in the lobby of the One Life to Live studio in Manhattan in 1987 by a Russian immigrant who continued to pursue her and send death threats written in blood for years. The man was later sent to a psychiatric hospital (for the second time) after being arrested outside the office of the Secretary of State in DC with a meat cleaver and a photo of Evans. (More obituary stories.)