Honor Blackman talks about Pussy Galore and her long career
05-May-2007 • Actor News
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She has offered tea, though she's the one who sounds as if she needs it for that classy rasp of hers, and is very chatty. I'm surprised because I was expecting to be intimidated by that Pussy Galore character, the James Bond villain with whom she will be forever associated.
"Aah," she says with a smile, "You've only been spared because I haven't been trying to frighten you."
She seems barely changed since her 1964 appearance with Sean Connery in Goldfinger. That enduringly beautiful bone structure has helped her avoid the usual jowls and pouches of age, and she remains an elegant shade of blonde. What she describes matter-of-factly as her "very good bosom" is still prominent under a black T-shirt.
Her career began in 1946 in the film Fame Is The Spur, but her big break came 15 years later with the TV adventure series The Avengers, co-starring Patrick Macnee as Steed.
"It was the hardest work I've ever done," she says, "although I enjoyed it. We didn't have a day off for the first year. I had to go to the gym to practise judo and choreograph fights, and I'd often have to stand for four hours while they fitted the leather outfits that became my trademark."
Macnee called her "the steeliest person I know".
She has worked with some of the world's most handsome leading men, including Dirk Bogarde in the film Quartet. "He became rather bitter in his last years, but when I worked with him, he was charming," she says.
Then there was Dean Martin in Something Big.
"Everybody said it would be awful and that he would always be drunk," she says, "but he wasn't like that at all. He was the most professional person I've ever worked with. He was patient and funny, and very polite â a real gentleman. And he never drank while he was working."
Her role in Goldfinger made her an international star and she credits Sean Connery with the success of the film.
"The Bond films were very new, and no one could have foreseen that they would still be turning them out 40 years later," she says. "Sean was very self-assured, but anxious to learn, and I found him very sexy. Still do. But doesn't half the world feel the same way?"
Blackman does not look or behave as if she's anywhere near 79 â an age when anyone else would be described as old.
She does, admittedly, have a bad back, a legacy from The Avengers when her character, Dr Cathy Gale, would throw heavies about. But that hasn't stopped her embarking on a punishing eight-shows-a-week run as Berlin landlady Fraulein Schneider in Cabaret on the London stage.
Considering that Lord Lloyd-Webber's protege Connie Fisher, young enough to be Blackman's granddaughter, was forced by exhaustion to take a rest from The Sound of Music, can a soon-to-be-octogenarian really hack it for a six-month run?
"Fraulein Schneider is the kind of woman who just keeps on battling. She's a survivor, and so am I," says Blackman briskly. "And, actually, five songs a night is not such a big sing. I have to do a bit of ballroom dancing, nothing wild; though I'd rather I didn't have to do it in high heels.
"I can do the job. That's what matters. I'm glad people are grown up enough now to acknowledge that you're not necessarily on the rubbish heap if you're a woman over 50. I mean, there are masses of young Sienna Whatnots out there, but look at all those marvellous old actresses â Sheila Hancock, Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Vanessa Redgrave, Helen Mirren â who are still working."
Blackman had a mere two weeks of rehearsals to prepare for her opening night.
"It's been frantic, frantic, frantic, but I can't tell you how thrilled I am to be on stage. I love theatre; it gives me such a charge. It's that energising mixture of joy and terror. I still get nerves, though, before a show."
Can she bear to read the critics? She has successfully run the gamut from Stephen Sondheim to Tennessee Williams and she gives me a stare that suggests: Are you implying that my reviews are ever anything less than glowing?
At last, a thrilling trace of the bossy Ms Galore.
"No," she says. "I just get other people to tell me if the reviews are reasonably decent. Of course, it hurts if something bad is said, but my problem is that I'm harder on myself than anyone else is.
"I'm a typical agonised perfectionist. I sat up last night thinking, why do I destroy myself this way?"
Pressed, she volunteers that the worst notice she can remember getting for a performance earlier in her theatrical career had called her "terribly good", but then chided her for having a "graceless arm swing".
This was possibly the result of being taught to box as a child by her ambitious father, Frederick Blackman, who wanted his daughter and only son Ken to be able to defend themselves against playground bullies.
She has previously lamented his negative influence, withholding praise and then punishing for what he saw as slacking, and attributes her self-critical tendencies to his apparent inability to ever say "well done".
But she seems to have mellowed towards him. "What he taught me has stood me in good stead," she says. "Self-discipline, the ability to work and order my life come from him, and I'm grateful for that. What's done is done and you can't bemoan the past.''
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