Honor Blackman, a Memorable James Bond Adversary, Dies at 94

6 April 2020 | By Anita Gates | New York Times

In a long career she was best known for an early role: Pussy Galore, who declared herself immune to Agent 007’s charms before judo-flipping him.

Honor Blackman, an actress who achieved fame as a beautiful pilot with judo skills and a highly suggestive name in the 1964 James Bond movie “Goldfinger,” then went on to a long screen career in her native England and abroad, has died at her home in Lewes, in southeastern England. She was 94.

Her family announced her death in a statement released to The Guardian in London. She was a breast cancer survivor, having undergone a lumpectomy in 2003.

Ms. Blackman may have been unknown to American audiences when she played Pussy Galore opposite Sean Connery as the dashing secret agent James Bond, but she had already become a star in Britain on television.

She joined the spy series “The Avengers” for its second season in 1962, replacing Ian Hendry as the co-star of Patrick Macnee, who played John Steed, an almost painfully cultured British intelligence agent. Her character, Mrs. Cathy Gale, was an anthropologist who enjoyed martial arts and dressing head to toe in leather while saving the world from increasingly bizarre plots and conspiracies.

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