Honor Blackman, James Bond’s Pussy Galore, dies aged 94

Actor also known for role in Avengers praised as ‘hugely prolific creative talent’ by family

Peter Bradshaw on Honor Blackman: an elegant and witty star who never took herself too seriously
Honor Blackman: a life in pictures

Honor Blackman, the actor best known for playing the Bond girl Pussy Galore, has died aged 94.

Blackman, who became a household name in the 1960s as Cathy Gale in The Avengers and had a career spanning eight decades, died of natural causes unrelated to coronavirus.

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Coronavirus: Iran to limit travel between major cities amid more than 3,500 cases – latest updates

California declares state of emergency; Italian doctors say German man may have been first European with virus and Scotland registers three more cases

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) issued a statement warning businesses to not exploit the coronavirus outbreak and take advantage of people. The CMA said it will take enforcement action against companies that are charging excessive prices or making misleading claims about the efficacy of protective equipment.

CMA chairman Lord Tyrie said: “We will do whatever we can to act against rip-offs and misleading claims, using any or all of our tools; and where we can’t act, we’ll advise government on further steps they could take, if necessary.”

Here’s the latest summary of today’s events.

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Phoebe Waller-Bridge: I was not hired for Bond because of my gender

Fleabag creator says she was never told 007 script role was to help with female characters

Phoebe Waller-Bridge will be only the second woman ever credited on a Bond movie script but she has insisted gender was not the reason she was hired.

The Fleabag creator said it was “mad” and “exciting” to work on No Time to Die, in which Daniel Craig will play 007 for the final time. But there was never a conversation about her being there to help with the film’s female characters.

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Is James Bond about to die? What the new 007 title might mean

The 25th outing for the superspy is called No Time to Die, which brings up a number of different theories

It has been a long road to get to the title of Bond 25. For a while the film was variously rumoured to be Eclipse (too generic), A Reason to Die (too much like low-hanging fruit for bored critics) and Shatterhand (too much like a worryingly graphic description of someone trying to manually catch their own diarrhoea). But now, finally, the truth is out. The next James Bond film will officially be called No Time to Die.

Related: No Time to Die: 25th James Bond film gets a title

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Film stunts under scrutiny after deaths and serious injuries

CGI-weary audiences’ demand for complex ‘real’ action is increasing the risk for performers

This week, the British stunt performer Joe Watts suffered a serious head injury on the set of the film Fast & Furious 9, at Warner Bros Studios in Leavesden, Hertfordshire, after he reportedly fell 30ft (9 metres) from a balcony. He was airlifted to hospital and has been put in an induced coma. Production on the film was shut down, and the Health and Safety Executive is investigating.

Stunt professionals are in high demand in the current climate of action-driven blockbuster films and increasing volumes of small-screen productions requiring cinema-standard action. Weary of unconvincing CGI and green-screen action, audiences are starting to want practical, unsimulated effects: humans doing spectacular stunts “for real”. However, as the volume and complexity of stunts has grown, so has the risk factor.

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70s Bond girl Caroline Munro: ‘I loved Roger Moore. His knitwear was classic’

She spent her career being chased by vampires, 007 and David Hasselhoff. And she also found time to sing with Cream and Gary Numan. Was it all as much fun as it looked?

One day, 50 years ago, a solicitor walking to work through Waterloo station in London noticed a 30ft-tall woman. She was dressed in an unzipped scuba top and was brandishing a knife drawn from a scabbard strapped to her bare thigh. It was his daughter. “Dad knew I was going to be the Lamb’s Navy Rum girl, but not that I would be on a billboard,” says Caroline Munro. “He said it was a bit of a shock.”

Over the next decade, Munro’s parents got used to seeing their daughter writ large and wearing smalls. There she was on the cover of the Music for Pleasure Hot Hits 11 album, practising archery in a bikini and knee-high suede boots. There she was with Peter Cushing, exploring the underworld, in minimal clothes but lots of eyeliner, in At the Earth’s Core (1976). And there she was opposite David Hasselhoff in the 1978 movie Starcrash, her limbs swathed, but only in cellophane.

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James Bond: 25th film launched in Jamaica – but still no title

Daniel Craig’s swansong as 007 will see the return of Léa Seydoux, as well as previously-confirmed Rami Malek

Fresh details of plot and cast for the 25th James Bond film have been revealed at an official launch at Ian Fleming’s villa in Jamaica. With the sea in the background, a platter of pears and papaya in front, Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson as well as new director Cary Fukunaga told radio presenter Clara Amfo that the new film opens with Bond relaxing in “his spiritual home”.

“Bond is not on active service,” said Broccoli. “He’s enjoying himself in Jamaica.” The trio confirmed that MI6 regulars Ralph Fiennes (who took over from Judi Dench as M after 2012’s Skyfall), Naomie Harris (as Moneypenny), Jeffrey Wright (Felix Leiter), Rory Kinnear (as Bill Tanner) and Ben Whishaw (as Q) will return, alongside Léa Seydoux, who played psychologist Madeleine Swann in 2015’s Spectre.

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Pierce Brosnan on GoldenEye: crazy stunts and thigh-crushings from Xenia Onatopp

A tank flattened a camera, M called him a sexist dinosaur and his fights with Onatopp were so rough they needed a padded cell … the Irish actor recalls his 007 debut

The first film I saw when I came to London as a boy was Goldfinger, which starred Sean Connery as 007. In Ireland, I had been brought up on a diet of Old Mother Riley and Norman Wisdom, so it was a bedazzling moment, seeing this lady covered in gold paint. I ended up getting a toy car with an ejector seat, but I didn’t have any aspirations to be James Bond. The character who really captured my imagination was Oddjob, Goldfinger’s bowler-hatted henchman.

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