Strong comparisons to Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich have been made about this sultry-eyed blonde who was born on 12th December 1927, in London's East End. While this may seem a bit overzealous, Honor Blackman's stylish allure over the years cannot be denied. One of four children, her father worked as a statistician with the Civil Service and her mother was a homemaker. Receiving diction lessons as a teenager, she later attended the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She temporarily followed in her father's footsteps with a job in the Civil Service, then worked as, of all things, a dispatch rider during the war. This is where she developed some of her trademark athleticism.

Honor received her first acting work in London's West End as an understudy in the play 'The Guinea Pig" and continued on with roles in "The Gleam" in 1946 and "The Blind Goddess" the following year. Films soon came a reality making her debut in _Fame Is the Spur (1946)_ starring Michael Redgrave. In this picture, she dies in a horse-riding accident. It was the beginning of a strange pattern for Honor in which many of her movie damsels would meet untimely deaths. Signed up with the Rank Organization, she joined several other starlet hopefuls in being groomed for better things. She was initially cast as demure, pleasant young things or "English Rose" types and received dependable but unmemorable co-star billing in such films as Daughter of Darkness, Quartet, A Boy, a Girl and a Bike, So Long at the Fair and Green Grow the Rushes, the last starring a young Richard Burton. Hollywood also took brief notice where she was cast as the second lead femme in MGM's Conspirator starring Elizabeth Taylor and Robert Taylor.

Following the stress of maintaining a budding career and a divorce from her first husband, Bill Sankey, Honor suffered a nervous collapse in the mid 1950s and was committed for a brief time to a hospital. After regaining her health, she began to rebuild her career in films and on TV with roles in rather obligatory "B" level fare. This culminated in a co-starring role in one of the more famous retellings of the tragic Titanic story, A Night to Remember which co-starred Kenneth More and David McCallum. Developing a solid footing again , she filmed The Square Peg with comedian Norman Wisdom and A Matter of Who with Terry-Thomas. TV series work came her way as well, none more suitable than her role as the leather-clad Mrs. Cathy Gale in the highly popular The Avengers co-starring Patrick Macnee as John Steed. Her incredulous beauty, self-confidence and athletic derring-do not only made her a catch for the men, but helped to inspire the 60s feminist movement. Honor left the show at its peak, however, and was replaced by the equally assertive and popular Diana Rigg as Mrs. Emma Peel.

Not out of work long, Honor continued in films playing the goddess Hera in the popular Greek odyssey adventure Jason and the Argonauts, complete with marvelous Ray Harryhausen special effects, and the melodrama Life at the Top with Laurence Harvey. She then filmed the most popular role of her career. As the daunting Pussy Galore in the classic James Bond movie Goldfinger, she went toe-to-toe with Sean Connery's womanizing "007" and created major sparks on screen, managing to outclass the (wink-wink) double-meaning of her character's name.

This resurgence of popularity should have led to better films but didn't, toiling for the most part in low-level melodrama and routine adventures. She earned raves on stage, however, as the blind heroine in the thriller "Wait Until Dark" and for her dual roles in "Mr and Mrs," based on two of Noel Coward's plays. She also enjoyed working occasionally with second husband, actor Maurice Kaufmann in the play "Move Over Mrs. Markham" and the film horror thriller Fright with Susan George. On stage she became a throaty-voiced sensation in such musicals as "A Little Night Music," "The Sound of Music," "On Your Toes" and "Nunsense."

Divorced from Kaufmann in 1975, she never remarried (he died in 1997). The couple adopted two children in the late 1960s, Lottie and Barnaby. Now a septuagenarian, the ever-lovely and still glamorous Honor performs frequently on stage, film and TV, more recently working in the long running hit comedy series in England The Upper Hand and her one-woman stage show "Wayward Ladies."
Chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history (#51). [1995] 23 June 1962: Filmed her first The Avengers episode, The Avengers: Death Dispatch. 20 March 1964: Filmed her final The Avengers episode, The Avengers: Lobster Quadrille. Children by Maurice Kaufmann: daughter Lottie and son Barnaby. Education: Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, England Honor is involved with an organization called Fairtrade, which aims to ensure that third world producers get treated fairly and can make a living from their work. Credits her father for her acting career because on her fifteenth birthday he offered her a choice - a bicycle or elocution classes. She chose the classes. Measurements: 37C-23-35 (Source: Celebrity Sleuth magazine) She allegedly declined a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) honour in 2002.