Written by: Jennifer Kathleen Gibbons

In 1987, Andrea Evans was at the top of her career.

The Illinois-born actress was one of the most recognizable Soap stars around, playing Tina Clayton Lord-Roberts, the bad girl on One Life to Live. It was a role Evans originated in 1978, playing the sweet godchild of the show’s heroine, Viki Riley. When she came back in 1984, she wasn’t so sweet. She found out Viki’s father, Victor (yes, he named her after himself), was Tina’s bio dad. This fact brought out Viki’s alter personality, Nikki Smith.

And then, the chaos ensued.

But Tina was mellowing out to a point. She had married Cord Roberts (John Loprieno) and was expecting his baby.

As for Evans, she made a high-profile appearance on the hottest new talk show of the year, The Oprah Winfrey Show. Two years before, she was on the cover of People magazine.

She was flying high.

One night when she was done with work, she went to the studio’s lobby when a man started to detain her. He had a Russian accent and kept bothering her. Evans never named the man in print; she didn’t want to give him any attention.

The man kept coming back to the studio. One time he cut his wrists out on the studio’s front steps. When asked for next-of-kin, he gave Evans’ name. He also sent her death threats written in blood. Evans later learned the man stalked Ronald Reagan for several years.

In the late ’80s, there weren’t many stalking laws on the books. Evans later told the Associated Press: “All of a sudden, I went from a nice happy-go-lucky life to having regular conversations with the police. She went on to say: “This was before people were that aware. There was great disbelief that this man was trying to harm me here, and the police could do nothing about it.”

The Daytime Emmy-nominated actress moved but was alerted by the FBI the man would move to a halfway house near where she lived. Once, he was breaking into then-Secretary of State James Baker’s house and was arrested. He had in his possession a meat cleaver and a picture of Evans. She knew she had to get out of his radar. She quit OLTL, left New York City, and kept a low profile for close to a decade, except for two movie roles.

In 1999, she came back. She was still scared (She told People she would stay up at night, worrying she made a mistake accepting a part), but she faced the fear and did it anyway. On The Bold and Beautiful, she played Tawny Moore, the trashy mother of Amber Moore (Adrienne Frantz) After a year, she moved to the soap Passions, where she played socialite Rebecca Hotchkiss who would do anything to have her daughter marry well.

In 2008, Passions was canceled. Evans decided to take a risk: Go back to OLTL.  By then she had more at stake: she had gotten married and had adopted a baby girl they named Kylie. But she knew she had to take the risk. She returned to the show and played Tina again for several months, then made a return appearance when the show was canceled in 2012. 

Evans’ last role on screen was playing Patty Walker on the web series The Bay, which ran from 2017-2020.

She died of breast cancer at her home in Pasadena on July 9th.

She was 66.