Born: August 22, 1925;

Died: April 5, 2020.

HONOR Blackman, who has died aged 94, helped create a new kind of screen heroine who combined style and grace, with intelligence, sexual allure and violent action, first as Cathy Gale on the television series The Avengers (1962-64) and then as the outrageously-named Pussy Galore in the James Bond film, Goldfinger (1964).

A blue-eyed blonde, Blackman was sometimes compared to Grace Kelly, but this was a Grace Kelly from some parallel universe, dressed head to toe in black leather in The Avengers, as though she had just stepped out of a fetish shop. In fact, Blackman and Avengers co-star Patrick Macnee recorded a song called Kinky Boots, which was not a hit at the time but reached number five when re-released in 1990, underlining her continuing influence on popular culture.

She later recalled: “Patrick had no sense of rhythm and can’t sing. We had a couple of brandies and decided he would speak it. The producer tapped him on the shoulder every time it was his line. But it was very funny and it has followed me around ever since.”

The leather gear was actually considered more practical than a skirt or more traditionally female ensemble for a woman who was called upon to throw a series of villains over her shoulder. Her character had a PhD in anthropology, but was also a judo expert, in a show that mixed action and humour with the occasional dash of surrealism.

“Cathy Gale was to become the first truly liberated, self-sufficient, fighting female character ever created for television, and way, way ahead of her time,” said The Avengers Forever! website.

Then came Pussy Galore, the first Bond girl who really gave 007 a run for his money, though the character seems dated now – a gay woman who suddenly changes sides in more ways than one after meeting Sean Connery’s James Bond. Blackman was already 39 when she played Pussy Galore and was for many years the oldest “Bond girl” – a term that Blackman herself detested.

After Goldfinger, Blackman slipped surprisingly quickly into older character roles, though her career was also hampered by personal problems, including divorce, while Diana Rigg replaced her on The Avengers and her character Emma Peel’s openly flirtatious relationship with Steed took the show to new heights of popularity.

The daughter of a minor civil servant, Honor Blackman was born in the East End of London in 1925 – that was her real birth name, not a stage name. For her 16th birthday she was given the choice of a bicycle or elocution lessons. This was a time when much greater emphasis was put on pronunciation and the way in which speech reflected class. Blackman was keen on the arts and opted for elocution lessons. She studied acting part-time at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama while working as a clerk in the Home Office.

Theatre work led to films, a contract with Rank, a part in the Titanic drama A Night to Remember (1958), appearances in Danger Man (1960) and The Saint (1962) and the role of Hera in the classic sword-and-sandal adventure Jason and the Argonauts (1963).

Notwithstanding the fact that she was playing a Greek goddess in the last-mentioned film, Blackman tended to play “English rose” types and Avengers creator Sydney Newman was unenthusiastic when she was suggested for the role of Cathy Gale.

The Avengers began in 1961, with Macnee as John Steed and Ian Hendry as the main star. It was decided to relaunch it a year later with Steed teaming up with a female partner. Newman reportedly told Blackman that she had to present a much tougher image than she did in her first outing, and fans discern a fairly swift change in the characterisation.

In Goldfinger, the third in the Bond series, she was part of the title character’s organisation, intent on robbing the gold reserves at Fort Knox, until Bond explains the error of her ways. Meanwhile, on The Avengers, Steed reveals that he has received a Christmas card from his former partner. “How nice of her to remember me,” he says, then glances at the postmark. “Whatever can she be doing at Fort Knox?”

Blackman appeared with Connery again in the western Shalako (1968), though the principal female role went to Brigitte Bardot. She continued working in theatre, TV and occasionally film into her eighties. In 1990 she wrote and performed a one-woman show about the French singer Yvette Guilbert at the Edinburgh Fringe. She played a glamorous older woman, the mother of one of the main characters, in 94 episodes of the sitcom The Upper Hand (1990-96). And on several episodes of Coronation Street she was Rula Romanoff, in 2004.

Blackman married and divorced twice. She and her second husband, the actor Maurice Kaufmann, adopted two children.