Honor Blackman
Birthday:
22 August 1925, Plaistow, London, England, UK
Height:
168 cm
Comparing this sultry-eyed blonde to Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich may seem a bit overzealous, but Honor Blackman's stylish allure over the years cannot be denied.One of four children, Blackman was born in London's East End to a statistician father employed with the civil service and a homemaker mother. She received diction lessons as ...
Show more »
Comparing this sultry-eyed blonde to Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich may seem a bit overzealous, but Honor Blackman's stylish allure over the years cannot be denied.One of four children, Blackman was born in London's East End to a statistician father employed with the civil service and a homemaker mother. She received diction lessons as a teenager and later attended the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She temporarily followed in her father's footsteps with a job in the civil service, and then was, of all things, a dispatch rider during World War II. This is where she developed some of her trademark athleticism.Blackman received her first acting work on stage in London's West End as an understudy for "The Guinea Pig". She continued with roles in "The Gleam" (1946) and "The Blind Goddess" (1947), before moving into film. She debuted with Fame Is the Spur (1947), starring Michael Redgrave. In that picture, Blackman dies from a horse-riding accident. This film established the strange pattern wherein many of her movie characters meet untimely deaths. Signed up with the Rank Organisation, Blackman joined several other starlet hopefuls who were being groomed for greater fame. She was initially cast as demure, pleasant young things or "English Rose" types and received dependable but unmemorable costar billing in films such as Daughter of Darkness (1948) (1948), Quartet (1948), A Boy, a Girl and a Bike (1949) (1949), So Long at the Fair (1950) (1950) and Green Grow the Rushes (1951) (1951), the last starring a young Richard Burton. Hollywood also took brief notice when she was cast as the second lead femme in MGM's Conspirator (1949) (1949), starring Elizabeth Taylor and Robert Taylor.The stress and struggles of advancing her career coupled with a divorce from her first husband, Bill Sankey, caused Blackman to suffer a nervous collapse in the mid-1950s. After a brief time recovering in a hospital, she regained her health and began rebuilding her career with rather obligatory B-level fare, at first. That reentry culminated with a costarring role in one of the more famous retellings of the tragic "Titanic" tale, A Night to Remember (1958) (1958), costarring Kenneth More and David McCallum. Developing a solid footing again, she filmed The Square Peg (1958) (1959) with comedian Norman Wisdom and A Matter of WHO (1961) (1961) with Terry-Thomas.TV series work then also came her way, notably with the highly popular The Avengers (1961), costarring Patrick Macnee as John Steed. As the leather-clad "Mrs. Cathy Gale", Blackman showcased her incredible beauty, self-confidence, and athletic derring-do. Her admirable qualities made her not only a catch for the men, but also an inspirational figure for the 1960s feminist movement. Blackman 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, Blackman took on the role of Greek goddess "Hera" in popular movie adventure Jason and the Argonauts (1963) (1963) with marvelous Ray Harryhausen and melodrama Life at the Top (1965) (1965) with Laurence Harvey. She then filmed the most popular role of her career: "Pussy Galore". In the classic "James Bond" movie Goldfinger (1964) (1964), Blackman 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.That resurgence of popularity should have led to better film opportunities but did not. Blackman toiled for the most part in low-level melodramas and routine adventures. She earned raves on stage, however, as the blind heroine of the thriller "Wait Until Dark" as well as for her dual roles in "Mr. and Mrs.", a production based on two of Noël Coward's plays. She also enjoyed working occasionally with her second husband, actor Maurice Kaufmann, in the play "Move Over, Mrs. Markham" and the film thriller Fright (1971) with Susan George. On stage, she became a throaty-voiced sensation in various musicals, such as "A Little Night Music", "The Sound of Music", "On Your Toes", and "Nunsense".Divorced from Kaufmann in 1975 (he died in 1997), Blackman never remarried. The couple adopted two children in the late 1960s, Lottie and Barnaby. Now an octogenarian, the ever-lovely and still glamorous star performs frequently, more recently working in the long-running English hit comedy series The Upper Hand (1990) and in her one-woman stage show, "Wayward Ladies". Show less «
Most of the Bond girls have been bimbos. I have never been a bimbo.
Most of the Bond girls have been bimbos. I have never been a bimbo.
I hate that term. They can call other people Bond girls, but I don't like it, for the simple reason that that character would have been a go...Show more »
I hate that term. They can call other people Bond girls, but I don't like it, for the simple reason that that character would have been a good character in any film, not just a Bond film. I consider Bond girls to be those ladies who took one look at Bond and fell on their backs. Whereas Pussy Galore was quite a character. Show less «
[About the Rank charm school] And please don't confuse me with people who were in the charm school. Everybody's always saying I came from th...Show more »
[About the Rank charm school] And please don't confuse me with people who were in the charm school. Everybody's always saying I came from the charm school, which I never did. People in the charm school were picked off the street and hadn't had any training, at ten pounds a week. And I was picked off the West End stage, at a hundred pounds a week, which was a lot of money then. The charm school people used to walk about with books on their heads. Mind you, some very good people came out of the charm school. Diana Dors was one. She was a great mate of mine through a couple of pictures. Show less «
[speaking about sex in modern films (2012)] It's like sex scenes, they were more powerful in the Sixties because they were all about suggest...Show more »
[speaking about sex in modern films (2012)] It's like sex scenes, they were more powerful in the Sixties because they were all about suggestion. Now nothing is left to the imagination, everyone humps everyone else, all over the place. I find that boring, frankly. Show less «
[on Sean Connery in 2012] I disapprove of him strongly now. Because I don't think you should accept a title from a country and then pay abso...Show more »
[on Sean Connery in 2012] I disapprove of him strongly now. Because I don't think you should accept a title from a country and then pay absolutely no tax towards it. He wants it both ways. I don't think his principles are very high. Show less «
[on former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher following her death in 2013] She was a powerful figure, but she did damn all for empower...Show more »
[on former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher following her death in 2013] She was a powerful figure, but she did damn all for empowering women. She didn't surround herself with any women whatsoever or encourage women to come into politics or do anything in particular. She could have been a quite wonderful role model. Show less «
[on Shalako (1968)]: It was almost the worst film I've ever made, from the point of view of pleasure. Edward Dmytryk had just come off the b...Show more »
[on Shalako (1968)]: It was almost the worst film I've ever made, from the point of view of pleasure. Edward Dmytryk had just come off the blacklist, so he had a lot to prove and was tense. Eric Sykes was going through a terribly deaf period. Brigitte Bardot they didn't dare leave alone, in case she committed suicide. Stephen Boyd was going through a religious conversion and used to come in each morning saying "Peace", instead of "Good Morning". Jack Hawkins, who played my husband, had recently had an operation for cancer of the larynx and had this hole in his throat covered by a medallion, and we were terrified of getting sand in it. He couldn't speak and therefore mouthed his lines silently. In one scene, we were supposed to have a row in which one tops the other; now, it's very difficult to have a row with someone who's not speaking! Show less «
NEXT PAGE
Captain Shea
Pussy Galore
Peggy
Penny Husbands-Bosworth
Hera
Professor Lasky