Honor Blackman didn't want to "be seen as a bimbo".
Honor Blackman
The former Bond girl - who famously played Pussy Galore in the 1964 film 'Goldfinger' opposite Sir Sean Connery as 007 - passed away earlier this week at the age of 94 due to natural causes.
And now, her friend of over four decades Richard Digby Day has remembered the actress as a woman who never wanted her iconic status to be purely reduced to the way she looked.
Richard said: "It was absolutely important to her not to be seen as a bimbo. The images of her are never actually bimbo-ish, they are powerful. Her beauty was very powerful."
The theatre director recalled the tale of Honor's first boyfriend - whom she met when her family evacuated to Bournemouth from London during World War II - as he revealed the actress broke up with him after he told her he'd need to "give up all this theatre nonsense" once they were married.
Richard added: "At the end of the war it seemed inevitable she and this boy would get married. But the young man couldn't understand how important theatre had become to Honor.
"They were on a bus one day and he said, 'When we're married you'll have to give up all this theatre nonsense'. And Honor said she literally got off the bus and never saw him again.
"She knew the theatre was something she couldn't give up. She was always strong-willed and knew her own mind."
And although Honor became known as a Bond girl for her striking beauty, 76-year-old Richard insists it was her "sense of self" that "made her so beautiful".
Speaking to the Daily Mirror newspaper, he said: "Her voice was always there, even at the end, and her smile, and her rather wonderful eyes.
"But a lot of it is to do with an inner attitude. One of the things that made her so beautiful was her sense of herself."