Honor Blackman

Honor Blackman (22 August 1925 – 5 April 2020) was an English actress, known for the roles of Cathy Gale in The Avengers (1962–1964), Bond girl Pussy Galore in Goldfinger (1964), Julia Daggett in Shalako (1968), and Hera in Jason and the Argonauts (1963).

Honor Blackman was born on 22 August 1925 in Plaistow, in east London, England, the daughter of Edith Eliza (Stokes) and Frederick Blackman, a civil service statistician.

She attended North Ealing Primary School and Ealing County Grammar School for Girls.

For her 15th birthday, her parents gave her acting lessons and began her training at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 1940.

While attending the Guildhall School, Blackman worked as a clerical assistant for the Home Office.

Following graduation, she was an understudy in the West End play The Guinea Pig.

In 1947 she appeared in the Patrick Hastings play The Blind Goddess at the Apollo Theatre.

Blackman's film debut was a nonspeaking part in Fame Is the Spur (1947).

Her other films include Quartet (1948), based on short stories by W. Somerset Maugham, starring Dirk Bogarde; Diamond City (1949), So Long at the Fair (1950), in which she again appeared with Dirk Bogarde; Green Grow the Rushes (1951), alongside Roger Livesey and Richard Burton; A Night to Remember (1958), an account of the Titanic disaster; the comedy The Square Peg (1958); Life at the Top (1965) with Laurence Harvey; The Virgin and the Gypsy (1970), and the Western films Shalako (1968) with Sean Connery and Brigitte Bardot, and Something Big (1971) with Dean Martin.

Blackman started acting on television in the recurring role of Nicole, secretary/assistant to Dan Dailey's character of Tim Collier in the television series The Four Just Men (1959).

During the 1960s, Blackman practised judo at the Budokwai dojo.

In a 1960 episode of Danger Man titled "Colonel Rodriguez" she played Joan Bernard.

In an episode of The Saint titled "The Arrow of God" (1962), Blackman played an adulterous personal secretary named Pauline Stone, who became one of several suspects in the murder of a despised gossip columnist.

In The Avengers from 1962 to 1964, she played Dr Cathy Gale, a self-assured, quick-witted anthropologist who was skilled in judo and had a passion for leather clothes.

Gale was unlike any female character seen before on British TV.

Blackman left the series after its third season to co-star in the James Bond film Goldfinger.

She played Hera in Jason and the Argonauts (1963), which featured stop-motion animation by Ray Harryhausen.

This helped her prepare for her roles as Cathy Gale in The Avengers and Pussy Galore in Goldfinger (1964).

Albert R. Broccoli said Blackman was cast opposite Sean Connery in the Bond film on the basis of her success in the British television series The Avengers.

He knew that most American audiences would not have seen the programme.

Broccoli said, "The Brits would love her because they knew her as Mrs. Gale[;] the Yanks would like her because she was so good—it was a perfect combination."

In an episode of The Avengers, "Too Many Christmas Trees" (1965), John Steed received a Christmas card from Cathy Gale.

Reading the envelope, he says in a puzzled voice, "Whatever can she be doing at Fort Knox ...?"

It was an inside joke, as Blackman was filming Goldfinger at the time.

In 1968, Blackman appeared opposite John Neville and Hylda Baker in the musical play Mr & Mrs, based on the plays of Noël Coward.

In December 1969 and February 1993, Blackman was taken by surprise as the subject of This Is Your Life.

In the late 1970s, she toured Australia and New Zealand with Michael Craig and Colleen Clifford in the comedy play Move Over, Mrs Markham.

In 1972, Blackman (as a special guest star) and Richard Basehart played a married pair of Shakespearean actors who commit murder in the American crime mystery series Columbo (episode "Dagger of the Mind").

In February 1979, she starred in Stephen Barry's production of Tom Stoppard's Night and Day at the Perth Playhouse, coinciding with Stoppard's presence as a participant in the Festival of Perth.

In 1981, she appeared in a London revival of The Sound of Music opposite Petula Clark.

The production opened to rave reviews and the largest advance sale in British theatre history to that time.

In 1983, she appeared in a film production of Agatha Christie's novel, The Secret Adversary, in the role of Rita Vandemeyer, and as Juno/Empress Eugénie in the BBC television production of Orpheus in the Underworld.

In 1986, she had a role in "Terror of the Vervoids", a segment of the Doctor Who serial The Trial of a Time Lord.

She spent most of 1987 at the Fortune Theatre starring as the Mother Superior in the West End production of Nunsense.

She is also known for her role as Laura West in the ITV sitcom The Upper Hand (1990–1996).

From 1990 to 1996, she appeared as Laura West on The Upper Hand.

She had roles in the films Bridget Jones's Diary (2001) and Jack Brown and the Curse of the Crown (also 2001).

Blackman returned to the theatre in 2005, touring through 2006 with a production of My Fair Lady, in which she played Mrs. Higgins.

She developed a one-woman show, Word of Honor, which premiered in October 2006.

From April to September 2007, Blackman took over the role of Fraulein Schneider in Cabaret at the Lyric Theatre in London's West End.