Honor Blackman

NEW YORK (AP) — Honor Blackman, the potent British actress who took James Bond’s breath away as Pussy Galore in “Goldfinger” and who starred as the leather-clad, judo-flipping Cathy Gale in “The Avengers,” has died. She was 94.

Blackman’s family said in a statement Monday that she died peacefully of natural causes at her home in Lewes, in southeastern England.

The honey-voiced Blackman first became a household name in the 1960s spy TV series “The Avengers.” She joined the show in the second season as Cathy Gale, the leather-wearing anthropologist with martial arts skills. But just as “The Avengers” was growing in popularity, Blackman departed it for the third James Bond film, playing Pussy Galore in 1964’s “Goldfinger.”