Goldfinger Star Honor Blackman Hated Being Called A Bond Girl

Honor Blackman played one of the most memorable and tenacious Bond "girls" in all of 007 history. Unsurprisingly, though, she hated the term "Bond girl," for the way in which it seemed to denigrate the ladies behind some of the best characters in all of the James Bond movies. For Blackman, who passed away in 2020 at the age of 94, using the unfortunately widespread term seemed to suggest Bond's female counterparts were nothing more than "bimbos," when her very own turn in 1964's "Goldfinger" is proof to the contrary.

"Goldfinger" is still seen by many fans as the quintessential 007 movie. It introduced so many of the tropes we think of when we think of James Bond and cemented the franchise's standing as one of the most reliably popular in the history of cinema. It also featured easily one of the best Bond "girls" to have ever graced the saga in Blackman's ... well, P***y Galore, a character who, despite having one of the more egregiously sexist names of all the women in the property, was also one of the franchise's more progressive female characters.

For Blackman, referring to her or any of her fellow female James Bond actors as "Bond girls" was demeaning. "There was no such thing as a Bond girl in my day," as she explained in a 2012 interview with the U.K.'s Radio Times, "and being called one now drives me mad! It makes us sound like bimbos who fell flat on our backs the moment we caught sight of Bond." As she went on to note, Miss Galore was nothing like the stereotypical image conjured by the term "Bond Girl." She was a "strong woman and a brilliant character," which is exactly why Blackman wanted to play her.

Honor Blackman always had a bittersweet relationship with Miss Galore. As she put it during a 2001 interview (via the Radio Times), "The best [thing about playing the role] was that I became better-known; the worst is that it is all l am really remembered for." Still, it's not as if her career was over after "Goldfinger." The former star of the popular British spy series "The Avengers" went on to appear in numerous TV, film, and stage productions. Similarly, almost 30 years after her Bond debut, she played Laura West in the British sitcom The Upper Hand," which ran from 1990 to 1996. Throughout her entire career, though, she maintained her dislike of the "Bond girl" label.

In an interview with journalist Paul Kirkley, Blackman once again expressed her hatred for the term. "Well, they can call other people Bond girls, but I don't like it," she explained. "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 P***y Galore was quite a character."

Blackman couldn't have been more right in that regard. A pilot who leads the all-female squadron "P***y Galore's Flying Circus," Galore was a match for Bond in every way. Despite the fact England's greatest spy ends up bedding the strong-willed aeronaut, she hardly swoons over him, prompting an uncomfortable exchange in which Connery's Bond forces himself on Galore in a barn. Even after that, however, Bond requires her help to foil Auric Goldfinger's (Gert Fröbe) plot, with Galore proving herself to be indispensable when it comes time to save the day.

For all the accusations of sexism, the James Bond franchise has showcased some formidable female characters. The movie widely seen as the worst of the James Bond film series, "Die Another Day," did at least feature one of the best female characters in the history of 007 in Halle Berry's Jinx. The self-possessed badass did not need Pierce Brosnan's Bond to get the job done, and in that sense, it's a real shame Berry never got to star in her own James Bond movie spin-off. Still, with her one-and done appearance, she continued a grand but all too uneven tradition of compelling women in cinema's most enduring franchise that goes all the way back to Ursula Andress' Honey Ryder in 1962's "Dr. No" and Daniela Bianchi's Tatiana Romanova in the 1963 follow-up, "From Russia with Love."

By the time Honor Blackman came to portray P***y Galore, then, she had been preceded by two other major female figures. But there was something about her character that seemed even more independent and powerful than her predecessors. Aside from resisting Bond's charms from the outset, she actually went toe-to-toe with Sean Connery's spy after catching him spying on Auric Goldfinger. What's more, Blackman herself represented that same strong will while publicizing the film. When faced with shock from U.S. audiences over her character's name, she embraced it. As she once noted during an interview (via The Hollywood Reporter), "I was quite shocked that they were shocked. I was rather taken aback. So, I used to quite deliberately say, 'Oh, you mean P***y?' And they used to die."