Bond girl Honor Blackman was no sex kitten

It was an impressive achievement in the youth-obsessed ’60s, when judo-grappling man-tosser Honor Blackman won the sex-kitten role in a Bond movie in her late 30s.

Actress Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore in a scene from the James Bond film 'Goldfinger'.

It was an impressive achievement in the youth-obsessed ’60s, when judo-grappling man-tosser Honor Blackman won the sex-kitten role in a Bond movie in her late 30s.

Already admired as leather-clad trailblazer Cathy Gale in Britain’s The Avenger television series, Blackman earned pin-up status as the alluringly named Pussy Galore in Goldfinger, released in 1964.

As she celebrates her 90th birthday today, Blackman still believes her co-star Sean Connery was the best Bond in the film franchise, although she is less admiring of his politics since he accepted a knighthood in 2000.

IN THE BOXING RING

Blackman was born at Plaistow, London on August 22, 1925, to World War I veteran Frederick, then working as a statistician, and mother Edith, a homemaker. Her sister Barbara was born in 1920 and brother Ken in 1923. She also had a younger sister, Yvonne.

“Honor is my real name,” Blackman told an interviewer in 2009. “My mother read it in a book.”

Her strict father was a harsh disciplinarian: “My parents had Victorian values, and so the man was always right,” she recalls, explaining he treated her like a boy, teaching her to box with her brother. When angry, he beat her with a leather strap.

Honor Blackman in scene from The Avengers.

After North Ealing Primary School Blackman attended Ealing County Grammar School for Girls. Believing his accent hindered his career, for her 16th birthday Blackman’s father gave her a choice of a bicycle or elocution lessons to erase her Cockney accent. Her elocution teacher introduced her to poetry and drama and advised Blackman’s father to enrol her at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

She was a part-time drama student and working as a Home Office clerk when her father saw an advertisement calling for auditions for an understudy in a West End play, The Guinea Pig. Blackman secured the job and when the show’s lead actor fell ill, she stepped up, moving to lead roles in two more West End plays.

ESCAPE TO STARDOM

She left home at 18, after her father hit her for wearing lipstick. She hit him back and walked out. Her first film was a non-speaking part in Fame Is The Spur (1946), in which she was killed by a cavalryman. At 20, she married businessman Bill Sankey, 13 years older and overly possessive. They divorced after moving to Canada in 1952, when he wanted Blackman to quit acting.

Her early films included roles with Richard Burton in Green Grow The Rushes and Elizabeth Taylor in Conspirator. In 1961 she married actor Maurice Kaufmann and was called to meet producer Leonard White to discuss casting for The Avengers. From 1962 Blackman played opposite Patrick Macnee as sexy, tough, intelligent Gale, who held her own in any fight.

Honor Blackman in a mock tussle with actor and martial arts expert Joe Robinson.

Blackman — who boasts “a terribly good uppercut. When I was 10 or 11 I knocked out two boys who were bullying my brother. I can’t stand bullies” — practised judo at the Budokwai gym and wrote a self defence book. She and Macnee also recorded Kinky Boots, a surprise hit on re-release in 1990. But Blackman explained sexual equality existed only in scripts during her early career.

“There was no equality of women when I started out and one was permanently chased around the office and all the rest of it,” she said.

“That’s what people did in those days and it was assumed you’d sleep with anybody and if you didn’t you wouldn’t get the work.”

Honor Blackman and Sean Connory in Goldfinger.

Blackman left The Avengers after 43 episodes, returning to movies when director Guy Hamilton cast her as Pussy Galore in the third Bond movie. At 39 during filming in 1964, Blackman held the title of oldest Bond girl until Monica Bellucci was cast in Spectre. Movie scenes were also rewritten to showcase Blackman’s judo talents.

Unable to conceive with Kauffman, in 1967 they adopted daughter Lottie and son Barnaby in 1968. Blackman is an avowed anti-royalist.

Her career continued with screen outings in The Upper Hand, Doctor Who and Never The Twain, and stage roles including My Fair Lady, The Sound Of Music and A Little Night Music. But she complains of limited acting roles for older women.

SEXY DESPITE HIS POLITICS

Although Blackman found Sean Connery “very sexy. Still do,” she is no fan of his politics. As a republican, she declined a CBE, thinking it “hypocritical to pop up to the Palace. Not like Sean, who accepts a knighthood but never comes here, doesn’t pay tax here and supported a yes vote in the referendum. But I don’t think he thinks deeply about politics.”

Blackman says Goldfinger’s Bond “was suave, good looking. Sean played him perfectly, you believed he would bed a woman, then calmly put a bullet through her head and then go to have a martini and not bother.”

Originally published as Bond girl Honor Blackman was no sex kitten