Honor Blackman: Actor whose judo-throwing turns in The Avengers and Goldfinger made her a household name

Honor Blackman shot to fame as the judo-throwing, black-leather-clad, kinky-boots-wearing Cathy Gale, putting fear into villains in The Avengers, which became the epitome of Sixties’ television fantasy series. Blackman, who has died aged 94, made the character – an expert shot who was also armed with a PhD in anthropology – a trailblazer for other powerful women on screen.

She also changed the course of the show, which had begun in 1961 as a dark, spy-orientated drama but upon her arrival the following year shifted towards the tongue-in-cheek tone for which is remembered. She joined in the second series as one of the new partners to secret agent John Steed (Patrick Macnee).

The show’s creator, Sydney Newman, had reservations about Blackman, believing the “English rose” film roles she had previously taken courtesy of the Rank charm school were at odds with the Avengers character. After her first episode, she was instructed never to smile, an edict that helped to establish Mrs Gale’s cucumber-cool, dispassionate dispatching of villains.

Another development was Blackman’s wardrobe. After initially producing guns and knives on screen, she was sent on a crash course in judo, which became the character’s trademark skill. Skirts were impractical, so fashion designer Michael Whittaker created tight-fitting leather gear and boots.

The sexual overtones were acknowledged when Blackman and the bowler-hatted, umbrella-toting Macnee recorded the novelty single “Kinky Boots”. It failed to chart in 1964 but reached No 5 on its British rerelease in 1990. Another spin-off was Honor Blackman’s Book of Self-Defence (1965), aimed at women.

After 43 episodes, Blackman left The Avengers for the big-screen role for which she would always be remembered – Pussy Galore in the James Bond film Goldfinger (1964). (Diana Rigg took her place in The Avengers as Emma Peel, another emancipated, combative woman, this time adept at karate.)

She revived her judo skills against Sean Connery in a role that brought her to the attention of American audiences for the first time. (The Avengers was not broadcast there until 1966.) These two roles made her a household name that overshadowed the characters she subsequently played.

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Honor Blackman was born in Plaistow, east London, in 1925 to Edith (nee Stokes) and Frederick, a civil service statistician. Her father was a disciplinarian who punished his daughter by beating her with a leather strap, but taught her to box so that she could defend herself against playground bullies.

After the family moved to Ealing, Blackman attended Ealing County Girls’ School, where one report stated that she was “diffident, but with a bright future”. She enjoyed horseriding, and made her stage debut at 13 in a play at St Stephen’s Church Hall, Ealing.

For her 16th-birthday present, she received elocution lessons, before training at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama part-time while working as a Home Office clerk and motorcycle dispatch rider.

In 1946, the 21-year-old made her West End debut at the Globe theatre in The Gleam. It was the start of a 60-plus-year stage career that included roles in Wait Until Dark (Strand, 1966), The Sound of Music (as Elsa Schraeder, Apollo Victoria, 1981), Nunsense (Fortune, 1987) and Cabaret (as Fraulein Schneider, Lyric, 2007). On tour, she played Mrs Higgins in My Fair Lady (2005-6).

Blackman’s first film role was alongside Michael Redgrave in political drama Fame is the Spur (1947). Her career appeared to be heading in the right direction when she was signed by the Rank Organisation. Playing Dirk Bogarde’s cousin in Quartet (1948) provided a good start, but Blackman was soon typecast among sweet young things and heroines. The Titanic drama A Night to Remember and Norman Wisdom comedy The Square Peg (both 1958) were among the better releases.

On television, there were one-off parts and the regular roles of Iris Cope in Probation Officer (1959) and Nicole, a crime-fighter’s secretary, in The Four Just Men (1959-60).

After making an impact in The Avengers, Blackman’s film career appeared to look up. She was cast in Jason and the Argonauts (1963) as the vengeful Greek goddess Hera, and in Life at the Top (1965) as Norah Hauxley, luring Joe Lampton (Laurence Harvey) to London. However, she eventually derived more satisfaction from acting in the theatre and took fewer film parts.

On television, between more one-off roles, Blackman was in the first two series (1981-2) of sitcom Never the Twain, playing Veronica Barton, the widow whose affections were sought by Donald Sinden’s and Windsor Davies’s rival antique dealers. She also starred in The Upper Hand (1990-96) as the mother of an advertising executive who hires a male housekeeper.

There was comedy in Coronation Street, too, when in 2004 she played Rula Romanoff, a wife-swapper propositioning Norris Cole and Rita Sullivan.

Blackman wrote the book How to Look and Feel Half Your Age for the Rest of Your Life (1997). A staunch republican and Liberal Democrats supporter, she turned down a CBE in 2002, the year in which she was diagnosed with breast cancer, which required her to have a lumpectomy.

Her two marriages both ended in divorce. Her first husband, Bill Sankey (1948-56), a business executive, emigrated to Canada in the Fifties and she was unwilling to give up her career to follow him. Her second husband (1961-75), the actor Maurice Kaufmann, appeared with her in the slasher film Fright (1971). They adopted two children. More than 15 years after their divorce, she nursed him back to health when he was recovering from cancer, although the disease returned and he died in 1997.

She is survived by her two children.

Honor Blackman, actor, born 22 August 1925, died 5 April 2020