Honor Blackman: life as a lonely glamourpuss

When Honor Blackman was growing up, no one told her she was beautiful. 'My father once said: "You're not a bad-looking girl",' the actress recalls. 'That was the biggest compliment I ever got.

'If I was going out somewhere important, I'd ask my mother if I looked all right. "You'll pass in a crowd," she'd say.' Anything more, her parents feared, would make the girl vain.

It is surely no coincidence that, ever since, Honor has worked hard for the praise she wanted as a child.

At 76, she remains a beauty and a sex symbol, her eye-popping figure still intact, her bearing poised, her smile flirtatious.

Four decades after her greatest roles - Cathy Gale in The Avengers and everyone's favourite Bond girl, Pussy Galore, in Goldfinger - her name is still synonymous with leather-clad seduction.

And in October, she will grace our screens in Coronation Street, playing an old sparring partner of Rita Sullivan's named Rula Romanoff. Rula, predictably, is a glamorous figure who ruffles feathers.

'It's going to be enormous fun,' Honor purrs, stretching catlike in her chair. And looking at her youthful figure, she will certainly turn heads in the Rovers Return.

For all that, the insecurities of her childhood linger. She describes how, recently, she was hurt by a single line in a review.

'My daughter was reading it to me. There was a paeon of praise, and then it said I still looked a hundred dollars. I was horrified - the phrase is "a million dollars". Why was I only worth a hundred? My daughter said: "Only you, from all that praise, would pick that out." And it's true. I destroy myself.

'I suppose that's part of one's upbringing. If you always feel "That's not good enough", you turn into Little Miss Perfectionist. It's very important to learn that failure isn't a total disaster.

'It's difficult, though,' she adds, arching an eyebrow. 'Because one does like to succeed.'

We meet at Tate Britain, where Honor, working with BT, is launching an online quiz linked to the exhibition Art And The Sixties. In sparkling black top, cream trousers and cream stilettos, she could easily knock two decades from her age. As we talk, however, it's clear her Sixties feminist ideals remain intact.

Her views of men were shaped during childhood by a dominant - at times tyrannical - father and a put-upon mother.

Her father was a minor civil servant damaged by his time in the trenches in World War I. Frustrated in his career, he transferred his ambitions to his four children.

As she grew up in West London, Honor felt nothing she could do was good enough for her father. He treated her like a boy, teaching her to box with her brother, Ken. When he was angry, he beat her with a leather strap.

Subconsciously, she absorbed ideas about the sexes that took decades to shake off. 'My parents had Victorian values, and so the man was always right. It took me ages to work out men don't always make the right decisions.

'I mean, instinct told me early on it wasn't the case, but it took me a long time to argue back.'

She left home at 18, after her father hit her for wearing lipstick.

Momentarily forgetting her submissive role, she hit him back and walked out.

She moved into a bedsit and won an acting job as an understudy at the West End's Criterion theatre.

At 20, she married a businessman named Bill Sankey, who reminded her of her father. Her new husband was possessive. When he told her he wanted to emigrate to Canada, she realised she would be happier alone and the marriage ended in divorce.

At 37, she married again, to actor Maurice Kaufmann. Honor wanted children but was told she and Kaufmann would not be able to conceive together. They decided to adopt, becoming parents to a baby daughter, Lottie, and a son, Barnaby.

Honor became a working mother, juggling career and childcare with help from a string of slightly unreliable au pairs.

Last spring, she became a grandmother when Lottie gave birth to a son, Oscar.

'He's wonderful, my grandson - quite edible,' she enthuses. 'And I have another on the way. Barnaby's partner is giving birth next month. I couldn't see my son settling down, so it's especially exciting.'

She was present at her grandson's birth and was deeply moved. 'Because both my children are adopted, I hadn't been through it for myself. Lottie wanted me to be there, and it's quite terrifying as a mother, because you want to bear your daughter's pain.

'Then, when this little creature pops out, all that's forgotten. It was just wonderful.'

Her own sadness at not having borne children is, she maintains, long behind her.

But she sees a new stability in Lottie since Oscar's arrival. 'Her roots are down now, which I think is very important for adopted children. It's the end of the road, so to speak, once they've had a child themselves and somebody depends on them.

'Of course, she and Barnaby always looked on their father and me as parents. But this time it's her blood that's passed on. It's an animal instinct that brings great satisfaction.'

As a mother, she tried hard to avoid the patterns of her own childhood - particularly the sense that nothing was good enough. 'As sure as hell I did!' she cries. 'It's so important to encourage and praise.

'I do sometimes have to stop myself from being a control freak like my father. My children just look at me if I try to be controlling and raise one eyebrow, and I shut up.'

During her marriage to Kaufmann, Honor's career soared, then seemed to stall.

Her husband's, meanwhile, was faltering. Neither could give the other the support they needed and eventually they split up. And Honor's old sense of failure flooded back.

One has a particular responsibility when you've adopted children,' she says today. 'You've taken them on to make sure they have the happy life they might not otherwise have had. You feel you've failed if the marriage doesn't continue.

'There are no divorces that are amicable as far as the children are concerned.'

For herself, however, she is at her happiest single. 'I don't really think I should ever be married,' she declares. 'I mean, I love men - but I don't ever want to live with one again. I like having them around. But I like to do what I like to do, when I like to do it.

'If you have a partner, it just doesn't work like that. I think I'm frightfully selfish now - but then I've lived alone for 25 years.

'I have a villa in Spain. I was there recently, wandering by the pool, thinking: "Oh, isn't this wonderful". And I was all alone. I mean, I love people, I'm quite a sociable person. But I really, really love being alone.'

She is sanguine about ageing, though she admits to having had Botox once - 'in there,' she says, tapping at a frown line. 'I haven't had it since, though you're probably going to tell me that I should. My beautician tells me I should have more. But I'm an actress, I need to move my face. I don't want to be a glamourpuss for the rest of time.'

With that, the girl who no one said was beautiful smiles rakishly and sashays towards the door.

Avengers fans can rest easy. There's plenty of purr in the old glamourpuss yet.