R.I.P. Andrea Evans: ‘One Live To Live’ and ‘Young And The Restless’ Soap Opera Actress Dead at 66

Soap star Andrea Evans passed away Sunday (July 9) from cancer. She was 66.

Evans was best known for playing the conniving Tina Lord in One Life to Live, a role she earned in 1979 that earned the actress her first Daytime Emmy nomination. She left the role from 1981 to 1985, during which she played Patty Williams in The Young and the Restless, before she returned and reprised her role again for a short period.

But the soap opera actress was later forced to leave the show again in 1990 and disappear from the public eye because of a violent stalker. Years later, Evans opened up about that period of time in her life that she spent out of the public eye, saying the fear drove her to stop going out and hire a private security team. The actress explained that the stalker first accosted her in the lobby of the One Life to Live studio in 1987, but the harassment continued over the years, later escalating to her receiving death threats written in his blood.

She abruptly quit the show in 1990 after he was spotted outside of the Secretary of State’s office, carrying a picture of Evans and a meat cleaver.

The fear “forever changed me,” she told People in 2008. “There’s no way it could not.”

She returned for a short-lived stint on the career-defining soap in 2008 and again in 2011.

“No matter what show I went to, no matter what other work I did or even in my own personal life, people want me to come back to One Life To Live,” she told ABC News Radio at the time. “And at some point, I had to honor their wishes.”

She also said she was “a little nervous” to play Tina again. “The minute I walked into the building and I got into costume,” she said, “it just slipped on like an old comfortable glove.”

Evans enjoyed a number of other roles throughout the years, forging a memorable career in soap operas. She simultaneously starred in over 700 episodes of Passions and The Bold and the Beautiful throughout the 2000s.

The actress later earned her second Daytime Emmy nomination in 2014 for playing Vivian Price in the web series, DeVanity.

Her most recent role was in the The Bay.

Evans is survived by her husband Steve Rodriguez and their daughter.