Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg
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Awards
Diana Rigg gained fame in the 1960s as Emma Peel on The Avengers. She won the 1994 Tony Award for Best Actress for Medea and an Emmy for Rebecca. She played Olenna Tyrell on Game of Thrones from 2013 to 2019. Rigg also played Tracy Bond, the only woman to marry James Bond, in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service 1969.
Names, aliases, and relatives of Diana Rigg — birth name, kin, and personal ties.
Diana Rigg by the numbers — life, work, and family.
Diana Rigg — early life, career, personal life, and legacy.
Rigg was born Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg on July 20, 1938 in Doncaster, Yorkshire. Her father, Louis Rigg, was a railroad engineer. When she was two months old, the family moved to India, where she learned to speak Hindi; they returned to England when she was eight. She attended Fulneck School, a boarding school in Yorkshire, and later trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.
Rigg made her professional stage debut in 1957 in The Caucasian Chalk Circle and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1959. She gained fame playing secret agent Emma Peel on The Avengers from 1965 to 1968. In 1969, she played Tracy Bond, James Bond’s only wife, in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service opposite George Lazenby. She won the 1994 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her title role in Medea on Broadway. She later won a Primetime Emmy Award for her role in the 1997 adaptation of Rebecca. She played Olenna Tyrell on Game of Thrones from 2013 to 2019. She also appeared in Doctor Who in 2013 alongside her daughter Rachael Stirling.
Rigg married Israeli artist Menachen Gueffen in 1973; the marriage ended in divorce in 1976. She married Archibald Hugh Stirling in 1982; they divorced in 1990. She had one child, actress Rachael Stirling, born in 1977. Rigg lived for eight years with director Philip Saville in the 1960s. She was a smoker from age 18 and continued until heart surgery in 2017 forced her to stop. She died of lung cancer on September 10, 2020 at age 82 in London.
Rigg is remembered as one of Britain’s greatest stage and screen actresses. She was appointed CBE in 1988 and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1994. She won two Evening Standard Theatre Awards for Best Actress and received honorary degrees from four universities. Her roles as Emma Peel and Olenna Tyrell have influenced generations of actors. She is the only Dame to have appeared in Doctor Who. Her final film, Last Night in Soho 2021, was dedicated to her memory.
The complete filmography of Diana Rigg — every film, TV show, and documentary credit, ranked by popularity.
Every award, honor, and recognition received by Diana Rigg — Grammys, hall-of-fame inductions, civic honors, lifetime achievements.
A wall of memorable lines from Diana Rigg — lyrics, interviews, and off-the-cuff remarks captured over a lifetime.
I Don’t Go Without Make Up, Though. I Rather Like That Transformation in the Morning from I Don’t Want to Look in the Mirror; Then You Start Pulling Yourself Together. It’s a Rather Nice Present to Yourself That You Can Still Do That.
I Had an Eye Job in My Early Forties. Someone Took a Photograph of Me in a Play, After I’d Lost a Lot of Weight, and I Did Look Like Miss Havisham. I Thought, I Have to Do Something I’m Too Young to Look Like This. so I Went and Had an Eyelift Once the Play Was Finished, and the Doctor Said That It Would Last Only About Eight Years. I Imagined After That It Would All Cave in with a Terrible Groaning Sound, Like Scaffolding, but It Didn’t, and I Haven’t Had Anything Done Since. I Look at Women Who Are My Age Who Look Absolutely Ravishing and I Know They Have Had Something Done. Well, Why Not?
If I Meet a Woman Who Is Immaculately Groomed, I Really Admire Her Discipline. I Grew up Admiring Out of This World Screen Goddesses, Such as Ava Gardner and Rita Hayworth, but I Have to Acknowledge That I Haven’t the Patience for Getting Dressed up Very Often at My Age You Think: Why Bother?. Now That I’m Older, I Don’t Go to Premieres or First Night Parties, Not Even My Own.
I Didn’t Like My Bond Girl Outfits. the Designer Was a Friend of the Directors and I Thought They Were Too Boring and Middle Aged for My Character. the Right Costumes Are Essential for Getting into a Part; I’ve Witnessed Many Costume Parades with Grumpy or Even Weeping Actors Because They’ve Been Put into the Wrong Thing.
In Those Days, Trousers Were Appallingly Cut for Women so I Used to Go to a Gentlemen’s Tailor to Have Them Made. Nowadays You Can Look at Some Quite Highly Priced Clothes and Be Astonished at How Badly They Are Finished. but Then, People Don’t Look for That Any More, It’s Only Old Bags Like Me That Do. When I Need to Look Smart, I Go for Armani Because He’s Just Absolutely Brilliant at Tailoring. I Always Dress for Myself, Not Men or Other Women. I’m Well Aware of Them Though You Get the Sweep of the Eye up and Down and I Think: You Poor Thing, Are You so Competitive That You Have to Measure Yourself Against Everyone Else?. It’s so Pathetic.
I Think I Was Quite Daring. I Was Once Escorted Out of a Restaurant Because I Was Wearing a Trouser Suit. It Wasn’t Considered Good Breeding for a Woman to Go Around in Trousers After 6:00 Pm, Especially in Smart Restaurants and Bars Such as the Connaught Hotel, Which Served the Best Cocktails.
Look at Me. I’m a Dame and I’m a Chancellor.
The Older You Get, I Have to Say, the Funnier You Find Life. That’s the Only Way to Go. If You Get Serious About Yourself as You Get Old, You Are Pathetic.
I Think Women of My Age Are Still Attractive. Men of My Age Aren’t. They’ve Got Their Cojones Halfway to Their Knees. They Have the Same Descent as Boobs.
I Don’t Want to Retire. I Never Want to Retire. What’s the Point of It?
I Sort of Vaguely Knew Patrick Macnee, and He Looked Kindly on Me and Sort of Husbanded Me Through the First Couple of Episodes. After That We Became Equal, and Loved Each Other and Sparked off Each Other. and We’d Then Improvise, Write Our Own Lines. They Trusted Us. Particularly Our Scenes When We Were Finding a Dead Body I Mean, Another Dead Body. How Do You Get ‘Round That One? They Allowed Us to Do It.
Little-known facts about Diana Rigg — origins, oddities, and behind-the-scenes details from a public life.
TV Guide in the United States voted her the sexiest-ever television star.
From age 18, Rigg smoked 20 cigarettes a day; she stopped in 2017 after heart surgery. A devout Christian, she joked that her heart stopped during the procedure: The Good Lord must have said, Send the old bag down again.
Born in Yorkshire to a railroad engineer father, she moved to India at two months and lived there until age eight, learning Hindi.
More properly known as Dame Diana Rigg, she was made a DBE in June 1994 by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to theater and film.
In October 2003, British courts awarded her $63,832 plus $134,000 in legal fees for a libel suit against the Evening Standard and Daily Mail, which had written she was an embittered woman who held British men in low regard.
Her smaller role on the 2014 series Detectorists came because her character is mother to her real-life daughter Rachael Stirling, who played the female lead.
Best known to the public as Mrs. Emma Peel on The Avengers.
She auditioned for Emma Peel on a whim, having never seen an episode of The Avengers.
She declined to reprise Emma Peel in The New Avengers, the 1976 sequel series.
Steve McQueen wanted her to play his love interest in the 1971 film Le Mans, but she was unavailable; Elga Andersen was cast.
Her ex-husband Archibald Stirling is the nephew of Colonel Sir David Stirling, founder of the SAS.
In 1973, she reunited with The Avengers co-star Patrick Macnee for the episode You Can’t Go Back.
She turned down the role of Elizabeth in the 1969 film Paint Your Wagon with Clint Eastwood due to illness; Jean Seberg replaced her.
She received Tony nominations for the 1972 Abelard and Heloise and the 1975 The Misanthrope, and won the 1994 Tony for Medea. Critics consider her among the great British stage actresses.
Rigg was the first major actor, along with Keith Michell, to appear nude onstage in the 1970 production of Abelard and Heloise.
She never retired from acting.
In the 1960s, she lived eight years with director Philip Saville and told tabloids she had no desire to be respectable.
She was an outspoken critic of feminism, stating in 1969, Women are in a much stronger position than men.
Her daughter Rachael Stirling was born on May 30, 1977.
Her final film, the 2021 Last Night in Soho, was dedicated to her.
Her remains were cremated at East London Cemetery and Crematorium.
Michael Parkinson, who interviewed her in 1972, called her the most desirable woman he ever met, saying she radiated a lustrous beauty.
She named the 1973 film Theater of Blood as the best film she ever appeared in.
She won Doctor Who Magazine’s Best Guest Actress for 2013.
She was nominated for the 1997 Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best Actress for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.
Her first husband, Menachem Gueffen, was an Israeli artist.
She died five months after Honor Blackman, whom she replaced on The Avengers. Both played main Bond women and were older than their respective Bond actors.
She is the only Dame to have acted in the Doctor Who franchise.
She was Chancellor of the University of Stirling from 1998 to 2008 and received an honorary degree from the same university in 1988.
She became an Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1967 and was the first to join the National Theatre of Great Britain in 1971.
Although she played Gabriele Ferzetti’s daughter in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, she is only 13 years his junior.
She and The Avengers co-star Patrick Macnee both appeared in James Bond films: Rigg in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Macnee in A View to a Kill.
She refused to appear in the 1998 film The Avengers; Dame Eileen Atkins took the role.
She was awarded CBE in the 1988 Queen’s New Year Honours and DBE in the 1994 Queen’s Birthday Honours.
She graduated from RADA and became an Associate Member.
She was considered for roles in Doctor Who before finally appearing in the 2013 episode The Crimson Horror with her daughter.
One of her films, the 1971 The Hospital, is in the National Film Registry.
She was a Patron of International Care & Relief and Chancellor of the University of Stirling, succeeded by James Naughtie in 2008.
She played two roles in television series about Queen Victoria: Baroness Lehzen in the 2001 Victoria & Albert and the Duchess of Buccleuch in the 2016 Victoria.
She was considered for the 1969 film Women in Love but the role went to Jennie Linden.
She had a grandson born in 2017 to Rachael Stirling and Guy Garvey.
She won the 1992 Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Actress for Medea.
She received the 2014 Will Award from the Shakespeare Theatre Company along with Stacy Keach and Sir John Hurt.
Her parents were Louis Rigg, 1903 to 1968, and Beryl Hilda Rigg, née Helliwell, 1908 to 1981.
She received honorary degrees from the University of Stirling in 1988, University of Leeds in 1992, University of Nottingham in 1995, and London South Bank University in 1996.
She won the 1996 Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Actress for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Mother Courage.
She was nominated for the 1999 Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best Actress for Britannicus and Phèdre.
She won the Variety Club of Great Britain Award for Best Film Actress for the 1982 film Evil Under the Sun.
She turned down the starring role in the 1971 film Countess Dracula; Ingrid Pitt took it.
She was considered for the 1971 film Straw Dogs but the role went to Susan George.
Quick answers to the questions readers ask most about Diana Rigg.
Celebrities similar to Diana Rigg — same craft, ranked by reach.
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