8 April 2020, 15:00 by Karzal

Honor Blackman passed away

Honor Blackman passed away at the age of 94 due to natural causes. The actress starred in, among others, The Avengers and Doctor Who (1963).

Blackman appeared, among others, in the second and third part of the British series The Avengers as Catherine Gale, an anthropologist with a black belt in judo. Gale helped John Steed (Patrick Macnee) solve various crimes. Her character was a renewed version of Doctor Keel (Ian Hendry) as Ian Hendry had left the show. In 1963, Blackman announced that she was going to leave the show. She would star as Pussy Galore in Goldfinger (1964), where she met agent 007.

Galore: "My name is Pussy Galore." Bond: "I must be dreaming.”

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Honor Blackman (right) with Patrick Macnee (left) on the set of The Avengers

In 1986, Blackman starred as Professor Lasky in Doctor Who (1963). After that, the actress focused on The Upper Hand, where she portrayed Laura West. The British actress could also be seen in Lace, Columbo, Coronation Street, The Royal, Probation Officer, Never the Twain and Midsomer Murders.

She was born in Eastern-London on the 22nd of August in 1925. Blackman and her husband at the time, Maurice Kaufmann, adopted two children. She portrayed her final role in 2015, in the series You, Me & Them as Rose Walker. The actress died of natural causes in her house in Lewes, Sussex.

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Honor Blackman

Comments (2)

BlackBiker • 8 April 2020, 10:46

I thought she was John Steed's best partner if I'm honest. Of course Diana Rigg as Emma Peel was also fantastic afterwards, but Honor Blackman has shaped the prototype of the "action woman". At a time when this was not normal at all. A woman who could push herself off, was intelligent and gave her male colleague good counterplay, that was quite new. After that, Diana Rigg took that form, and of course gave it her own unforgettable twist. But without Honor Blackman, women probably wouldn't have been accepted as action stars until much later.

0Translated from Dutch.