Honor Blackman

Honor Blackman Overview

Honor Blackman is an English actress, born August 22, 1925 in Plaistow, Newham, a working-class neighborhood in eastern London. Although the buxom blonde has had a long, successful career in movies, television and on stage, Blackman is best known to a global audience for two sexually charged roles in the 1960s.

Blackman originated the role of the woman warrior as leather-clad, judo-chopping Cathy Gale on The Avengers, a UK spy series aired in markets around the world. Honor left that for another tough but sexy part, the extravagantly named Bond heroine P*ssy Galore in Goldfinger, which established the series as a worldwide phenomenon.

While known as a capable actress, Blackman's striking good looks and fantastic figure helped her win such parts. In the 1950s and 1960s, her bust-waist-hips measurements were generally given as 37C-23-36 (or 36-23-37) and her weight at 125-127 pounds. Known for her beautiful breasts, Honor Blackman showed them off in an extended topless sequence in Ein Kampf um Rom.

Honor Blackman Personal Life

Blackman persuaded her father, a statistician, to pay for acting lessons as a birthday gift. While she continued her training at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, she worked as a clerical assistant in the Home Office.

Honor has been married twice, to Bill Sankey (1946 – 1956) and the British actor Maurice Kaufmann (1963 – 1975), with whom she appeared in the film Fright (1971). She adopted two children with Kaufmann, Barnaby and Lottie.

Politically progressive, Blackman is a supporter of the Liberal Democratic Party, and is active in Republic, a campaign to eliminate the British monarchy as an expensive anachronism and replace it with an elected head of state.

Honor Blackman The Avengers

After the departure of leading man Ian Hendry as the result of a work stoppage in 1962, producers of the successful show searched extensively for a new partner for co-star Patrick Macnee. After seeing a news report on a British colonial wife in Kenya who had seen family members killed by independence fighters, executive Sydney Newman of Associated British television had a revelation.

"What knocked me out was the woman... on her back was her baby in a papoose-like bag, but strapped around her waist was a bullet-studded belt with an enormous pistol in a holster," Newman wrote in Macnee's book 'The Avengers and Me.

While pairing Macnee with two other co-stars, Newman called for the development of brainy and physical woman character, who would be just as capable as male heros. Initially, he considered Blackman much too typical of a mannered, smiling "English Rose" to play the part. But his choice was unavailable. Producer Leonard White championed Blackman, and eventually hired her.

The action show was shot live on tape, and Blackman found her lack of martial training a detriment. One tactic, having Honor wear a pistol strapped to a gorgeous thigh, was exciting in still photos but cumbersome in action. To fight more realistically on-screen, Honor Blackman began taking judo lessons from her stunt coordinator, and pursued the sport seriously away from the studio.