Honor Blackman didn't want to ''be seen as a bimbo''.

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.''