The actor Pamela Salem, who has died aged 80, brought a touch of class to a number of well-known franchises during a screen career of more than 50 years. She achieved cinematic immortality by playing the loyal secretary Miss Moneypenny in the James Bond film Never Say Never Again (1983), an anomalous entry to the canon, made independently of the Eon-produced series, that marked the return of Sean Connery to the role of the famous secret agent after an absence of 12 years.
Salem had worked with Connery on the 1978 film The First Great Train Robbery and when he found out she was in the running for Moneypenny he encouraged the producers to hire her. She was disappointed that many of her scenes ended up on the cutting-room floor, but her playful chemistry with Connery is still apparent in the finished product.
Salem was born in Bombay (now Mumbai) in British India, to Karsa Salem, a Manchester-educated civil engineer from Greece, who had founded a trading company, the Dodsal Group, and his Sri Lanka-born wife, Pearl (nee Russell-Payne). They encouraged Pamela and her younger sister, Gillie, to explore their creative sides from an early age.
Pamela wanted to act, and her talents were encouraged at Wispers independent girls’ boarding school in Sussex, which she attended from the age of seven. She then studied at Heidelberg University in Germany before attending the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, graduating in 1966 and joining the Civic theatre in Chesterfield.
She broke into television in 1969 and became a regular face on the small screen. Her precise diction made her perfect casting as upper-class English women, and her air of cosmopolitan refinement secured her roles as fashionable eastern Europeans or sophisticated continentals. Even when playing on the wrong side of the law, she exuded elegance.
After a decade of notable guest roles, Salem starred as the cruel and powerful witch Belor in the children’s series Into the Labyrinth (1981-82), her venomous performance terrifying a generation of youngsters. More fantastical fare followed when she played a French countess in The Tripods (1984), and she was convincingly Gallic again in three series of the gentle culture-clash sitcom French Fields (1989-91), in which she was Chantal, neighbour to Hester and William Fields (Julia McKenzie and Anton Rodgers).
She possessed enough warmth and sparkle to prevent her glamorous characters from ever seeming too aloof, but she could project steel when needed. When, in 1988, the BBC soap EastEnders required an actor with enough heft to pose a serious threat to the shady pub landlord Den Watts, Salem joined the series as Joanne Francis, the face of the underground crime outfit “The Firm”. This storyline was devised to capitalise on the popularity of Watts, played by Leslie Grantham, who was already known to Salem: she had conducted drama classes for prisoners when he was in Wormwood Scrubs serving a sentence for murder, and encouraged him to pursue a career in the business on his release.
She appeared in two highly regarded stories in the long-running science-fiction series Doctor Who: as Toos, the cultivated deputy commander of a Sandminer, in The Robots of Death (1977), and as a cool scientist, Professor Rachel Jensen, in Remembrance of the Daleks (1988). The characters have endured: she revisited them both in spin-off audio series: Toos in The Robots (2020-21) and Rachel in Counter Measures (2012-2020).
Her film credits included The Bitch (1979, with Joan Collins) and Bill Condon’s Gods and Monsters (1998), and her later theatre work took in national tours of Francis Durbridge’s thriller The Small Hours for Bill Kenwright (1991) and Macbeth (in which she played Lady Macbeth opposite Paul Darrow, 1992).
In 1982 she married the actor Michael O’Hagan and in 1991 the couple produced a TV documentary film, Fish in the Sky, about kite flying. Considering a change of career and new surroundings, they moved to the US – to Los Angeles and then Miami – where they co-wrote and produced radio and theatre productions. Salem continued to act there, popping up in TV shows such as ER (1996), Party of Five (2000) and The West Wing (as the British prime minister, 2005).
She was a popular company member, known for her easy manner, interest in others, kindness and generosity. She loved Miami, having been attracted by its warmth, its ocean and its crumbling art deco heritage, which reminded her of old Bombay.
Michael died in 2017. Salem is survived by her sister.
• Pamela Fortunée Salem, actor, born 22 January 1944; died 21 February 2024
