German actress Karin Dor, who played an assassin sent to kill James Bond in You Only Live Twice, has died aged 79.

Dor passed away on Monday at a care home in Munich, her son told Bild, after failing to recover from injuries she sustained in a heavy fall last year.

She acted in dozens of films, TV productions and theater plays during a career that began in her German homeland when she was 17.

Karin Dor, who played an assassin sent to kill James Bond in the 1967 film You Only Live Twice, has passed away at the age of 79

Dor began acting aged 17 and continued working into her elder years. But her biggest role came alongside Sean Connery as assassin Helga Brandt

But her most well-known role came opposite Sean Connery in the 1967 Bond film in which she played assassin Helga Brandt.

Brandt is sent to kill Bond, who is on the trail of evil genius Ernst Blofeld after he kidnapped a NASA spacecraft, but fails in her task.

As revenge her boss - Mr. Osato - dumps her into a piranha pool where she is devoured alive.

Dor is still the only German actress to have secured a role as a Bond Girl.

Among her other projects was Alfred Hitchcock's 1969 thriller 'Topaz,' and the U.S. crime series 'Ironside' and 'The FBI.'

She was born Katharose Derr in Wiesbaden, west of Frankfurt, in 1938 and got her first screen role aged 17 in Rosen-Resli, directed by Haral Reinl.

Despite delivering just one line, she won the attention of the director who cast her in his next project, The Silent Angel, and married her in 1954.

The pair had one child together before splitting in 1968.

Dor's character fails to kill 007 and as punishment is dumped into a pool of piranhas

Dor died in a care home in Munich on Wednesday, according to a theatre where she worked

Dor pictured in 2015 while attending a James Bond-themed event in Hamburg, Germany

She was married three times, most recently to American stuntman and actor George Robotham. The pair wed in 1988 and stayed together until Robotham died in 2007.

Dor was injured in July last year after being involved in an accident with a mother pushing her baby in a pram in South Tyrol, Bild reports.

She fell and hit her head on a concrete curb and was unconscious for 15 minutes.

The actress came around and was initially well, and was subsequently cast in a comedy show at the prestigious Bayerischer Hof hotel in Munich.

But it was during rehearsals for that show that doctors realised her injuries were more serious than previously thought, as she began suffering from headaches and was often tired.

Her condition rapidly worsened in March this year and she was confined to a care home, where she ultimately died.