The actor Pamela Salem, who has died aged 80, introduced a contact of sophistication to a lot of well-known franchises throughout a display profession of greater than 50 years. She achieved cinematic immortality by enjoying the loyal secretary Miss Moneypenny within the James Bond movie By no means Say By no means Once more (1983), an anomalous entry to the canon, made independently of the Eon-produced sequence, that marked the return of Sean Connery to the function of the well-known undercover agent after an absence of 12 years.
Salem had labored with Connery on the 1978 movie The First Nice Prepare Theft and when he came upon she was within the working for Moneypenny he inspired the producers to rent her. She was disenchanted that lots of her scenes ended up on the cutting-room ground, however her playful chemistry with Connery remains to be obvious within the completed product.
Salem was born in Bombay (now Mumbai) in British India, to Karsa Salem, a Manchester-educated civil engineer from Greece, who had based a buying and selling firm, the Dodsal Group, and his Sri Lanka-born spouse, Pearl (nee Russell-Payne). They inspired Pamela and her youthful sister, Gillie, to discover their artistic sides from an early age.
Pamela needed to behave, and her skills have been inspired at Wispers unbiased ladies’ boarding college in Sussex, which she attended from the age of seven. She then studied at Heidelberg College in Germany earlier than attending the Central Faculty of Speech and Drama in London, graduating in 1966 and becoming a member of the Civic theatre in Chesterfield.
She broke into tv in 1969 and have become an everyday face on the small display. Her exact diction made her good casting as upper-class English girls, and her air of cosmopolitan refinement secured her roles as trendy japanese Europeans or refined continentals. Even when enjoying on the mistaken aspect of the regulation, she exuded magnificence.
After a decade of notable visitor roles, Salem starred because the merciless and highly effective witch Belor within the youngsters’s sequence Into the Labyrinth (1981-82), her venomous efficiency terrifying a era of children. Extra fantastical fare adopted when she performed a French countess in The Tripods (1984), and he or she was convincingly Gallic once more in three sequence of the mild culture-clash sitcom French Fields (1989-91), wherein she was Chantal, neighbour to Hester and William Fields (Julia McKenzie and Anton Rodgers).
She possessed sufficient heat and sparkle to stop her glamorous characters from ever seeming too aloof, however she might mission metal when wanted. When, in 1988, the BBC cleaning soap EastEnders required an actor with sufficient heft to pose a severe menace to the shady pub landlord Den Watts, Salem joined the sequence as Joanne Francis, the face of the underground crime outfit “The Agency”. This storyline was devised to capitalise on the recognition of Watts, performed by Leslie Grantham, who was already recognized to Salem: she had carried out drama courses for prisoners when he was in Wormwood Scrubs serving a sentence for homicide, and inspired him to pursue a profession within the enterprise on his launch.
She appeared in two extremely regarded tales within the long-running science-fiction sequence Physician Who: as Toos, the cultivated deputy commander of a Sandminer, in The Robots of Loss of life (1977), and as a cool scientist, Professor Rachel Jenson, in Remembrance of the Daleks (1988). The characters have endured: she revisited them each in spin-off audio sequence: Toos in The Robots (2020-21) and Rachel in Counter Measures (2012-2020).
Her movie credit included The Bitch (1979, with Joan Collins) and Invoice Condon’s Gods and Monsters (1998), and her later theatre work took in nationwide excursions of Francis Durbridge’s thriller The Small Hours for Invoice Kenwright (1991) and Macbeth (wherein she performed Girl Macbeth reverse Paul Darrow, 1992).
In 1982 she married the actor Michael O’Hagan and in 1991 the couple produced a TV documentary movie, Fish within the Sky, about kite flying. Contemplating a change of profession and new environment, they moved to the US – to Los Angeles after which Miami – the place they co-wrote and produced radio and theatre productions. Salem continued to behave there, popping up in TV exhibits similar to ER (1996), Get together of 5 (2000) and The West Wing (because the British prime minister, 2005).
She was a well-liked firm member, recognized for her simple method, curiosity in others, kindness and generosity. She liked Miami, having been attracted by its heat, its ocean and its crumbling artwork deco heritage, which reminded her of previous Bombay.
Michael died in 2017. Salem is survived by her sister.
