Honor is happy to be swapping glamour roles for humour

The husky voice at the other end of a crackly phone line is unmistakeably that of Honor Blackman who, even in her early 80s, is still tagged as the timeless sex bomb of The Avengers and Goldfinger fame. One cannot blame her for being rather tired of such stereotyping, or for taking roles in two very different comedies. The first is Reuniting the Rubins, a very funny farce about a dysfunctional Jewish family, made by Yoav Factor, a graduate of the Northern Film School in Leeds. The second is Cockneys vs. Zombies in which Blackman, a bona fide East Ender, plays a character named Peggy.
By Tony Earnshaw
Published 18th Mar 2011, 09:38 BST

Reuniting the Rubins is one of almost 200 titles playing in the 17th annual Bradford International Film Festival next week. Blackman plays Timothy Spall’s mother. As for Cockneys vs. Zombies, it’s anyone’s guess...

“[Making Reuniting the Rubins] was very odd because it’s about an orthodox Jewish family and it’s something I know very little about. Anyway, a person is a person whatever they are. And I’ve got another one coming. I’m going to play a cockney in Cockneys vs. Zombies!” she laughs.

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When she entered films with Fame is the Spur in 1947, Blackman was barely out of her teens. Hers was an intermittent movie career that included the Bond movie and co-stars such as Connery (twice), Richard Burton, Dirk Bogarde and Norman Wisdom.

She possessed an allure that many of her contemporaries did not. But she found that blonde good looks and décolletage limited her to roles that were often little more than window dressing. At 83, she hopes to redress the balance. “I consider myself an actor who’s capable of – I won’t say everything – but almost everything that might be asked of me,” says Blackman with a degree of pride. “The problem is that I’ve always been labelled some glamour creature and I haven’t been offered anything like that for some time. Happily now that I’m older it is happening.”

She’s also very funny. In Reuniting the Rubins she displays a deft knack for comedy which her glamorous roles have somewhat camouflaged. I ask if being beautiful was a help or a hindrance. “I don’t know [that] you can work at comedy. Well, you can work on moves and things to help get comedic stuff across but I wouldn’t have thought that if it doesn’t come naturally you’d be able to do it very well.

“When people see Reuniting the Rubins and then the next one they probably will register I can do character work. It doesn’t mean I never again in my life want to play somebody who’s vaguely good-looking. Usually character actors get much more interesting parts than leads. [Being attractive] was definitely a help when I started but it was also a hindrance. All they could see was the glamour and the bosom and that’s all they focused on. Happily they don’t any more.

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“This is what is good about our profession: it’s never boring. There’s always something around the corner that you didn’t expect.”

Reuniting the Rubins (12A) receives its UK premiere at Bradford International Film Festival on March 23.