Diana Rigg

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_Rigg 

 

Dame Diana Rigg DBE
Rigg in Diana in 1973
Born	Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg July 20, 1938 Doncaster, West Riding of Yorkshire, England
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1957–present
Spouse(s)	Menachem Gueffen ​ ( m. 1973; div. 1976) Archie Stirling ​ ( m. 1982; div. 1990) (1 child)
Children	Rachael Stirling

Dame Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg (born July 20, 1938), DBE is an English actress. She played Emma Peel in the TV series The Avengers (1965–68), Countess Teresa di Vicenzo, wife of James Bond, in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) and Olenna Tyrell in Game of Thrones (2013–17). She has also had a career in theatre, including playing the title role in Medea, both in London and New York, for which she won the 1994 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. She was made a CBE in 1988 and a Dame in 1994 for services to drama.

Rigg made her professional stage debut in 1957 in The Caucasian Chalk Circle, and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1959. She made her Broadway debut in the 1971 production of Abelard & Heloise. Her film roles include Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1968); Lady Holiday in The Great Muppet Caper (1981); and Arlena Marshall in Evil Under the Sun (1982). She won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for the BBC miniseries Mother Love (1989), and an Emmy Award for her role as Mrs. Danvers in an adaptation of Rebecca (1997). Her other television credits include You, Me and the Apocalypse (2015), Detectorists (2015), and the Doctor Who episode "The Crimson Horror" (2013) with her daughter, Rachael Stirling.

Early life and education

Rigg was born in Doncaster, which was then in the West Riding of Yorkshire, now in South Yorkshire, in 1938, to Louis Rigg (1903–1968) and Beryl Hilda (née Helliwell; 1908–1981); her father was a railway engineer who had been born in Yorkshire. Between the ages of two months and eight years Rigg lived in Bikaner, India, where her father was employed as a railway executive.^[2] She spoke Hindi as her second language in those young years.

She was later sent back to England to attend a boarding school, Fulneck Girls School, in a Moravian settlement near Pudsey. Rigg hated her boarding school, where she felt like a fish out of water, but she believes that Yorkshire played a greater part in shaping her character than India did. She trained as an actress at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art from 1955–57, where her classmates included Glenda Jackson and Siân Phillips.

Theatre career

Rigg's career in film, television and the theatre has been wide-ranging, including roles in the Royal Shakespeare Company between 1959 and 1964. Her professional debut was as Natasha Abashwilli in the RADA production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle at the York Festival in 1957.

She returned to the stage in the Ronald Millar play Abelard and Heloïse in London in 1970, and made her Broadway debut with the play in 1971, earning the first of three Tony Award nominations for Best Actress in a Play. She received her second nomination in 1975, for The Misanthrope. A member of the National Theatre Company at the Old Vic from 1972 to 1975, Rigg took leading roles in premiere productions of two Tom Stoppard plays, Dorothy Moore in Jumpers (National Theatre, 1972) and Ruth Carson in Night and Day (Phoenix Theatre, 1978).

In 1982, she appeared in a musical called Colette, based on the life of the French writer and created by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt, but it closed during an American tour en route to Broadway. In 1987 she took a leading role in the West End production of Stephen Sondheim's musical Follies. In the 1990s, she had triumphs with roles at the Almeida Theatre in Islington, including Medea in 1992 (which transferred to the Wyndham's Theatre in 1993 and then Broadway in 1994, for which she received the Tony Award for Best Actress), Mother Courage at the National Theatre in 1995 and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at the Almeida Theatre in 1996 (which transferred to the Aldwych Theatre in 1997).

In 2004, she appeared as Violet Venable in Sheffield Theatres' production of Tennessee Williams's play Suddenly Last Summer, which transferred to the Albery Theatre. In 2006, she appeared at the Wyndham's Theatre in London's West End in a drama entitled Honour which had a limited but successful run. In 2007, she appeared as Huma Rojo in the Old Vic's production of All About My Mother, adapted by Samuel Adamson and based on the film of the same title directed by Pedro Almodóvar.

She appeared in 2008 in The Cherry Orchard at the Chichester Festival Theatre, returning there in 2009 to star in Noël Coward's Hay Fever. In 2011 she played Mrs. Higgins in Pygmalion at the Garrick Theatre, opposite Rupert Everett and Kara Tointon, having played Eliza Doolittle 37 years earlier at the Albery Theatre.

In February 2018, she returned to Broadway in the non-singing role of Mrs. Higgins in My Fair Lady. She commented on taking the role, "I think it's so special. When I was offered Mrs. Higgins, I thought it was just such a lovely idea." She received her fourth Tony nomination for the role.

Film and television career

Rigg appeared in the British 1960s television series The Avengers (1961–69) opposite Patrick Macnee as John Steed, playing the secret agent Emma Peel in 51 episodes, replacing Elizabeth Shepherd at very short notice when Shepherd was dropped from the role after filming two episodes. Rigg auditioned for the role on a whim, without ever having seen the programme. Although she was hugely successful in the series, she disliked the lack of privacy that it brought. Also, she was not comfortable in her position as a sex symbol. In an interview with The Guardian in 2019, Rigg stated that "becoming a sex symbol overnight had shocked" her. She also did not like the way that she was treated by production company Associated British Corporation (ABC). For her second series she held out for a pay rise from £150 a week to £450; she said in 2019—when gender pay inequality was very much in the news—that "not one woman in the industry supported me ... Neither did Patrick [Macnee, her co-star]... But I was painted as this mercenary creature by the press when all I wanted was equality. It’s so depressing that we are still talking about the gender pay gap." She did not stay for a third year. Patrick Macnee noted that Rigg had later told him that she considered Macnee and her driver to be her only friends on the set. On the big screen she became a Bond girl in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), playing Tracy Bond, James Bond's only wife, opposite George Lazenby. She said she took the role with the hope that she would become better known in the United States. In 1973–1974, she starred in a short-lived US sitcom called Diana.

Her other films from this period include The Assassination Bureau (1969), Julius Caesar (1970), The Hospital (1971), Theatre of Blood (1973), In This House of Brede (1975), based on the book by Rumer Godden, and A Little Night Music (1977). She appeared as the title character in The Marquise (1980), a television adaptation of play by Noël Coward. She appeared in the Yorkshire Television production of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler (1981) in the title role, and as Lady Holiday in the film The Great Muppet Caper (also 1981). The following year she received acclaim for her performance as Arlena Marshall in the film adaptation of Agatha Christie's Evil Under the Sun, sharing barbs with her character's old rival, played by Maggie Smith.

She appeared as Regan, the king's treacherous second daughter, in a Granada Television production of King Lear (1983), which starred Laurence Olivier in the title role. As Lady Dedlock she costarred with Denholm Elliott in a television version of Dickens' Bleak House (BBC, 1985), and played the Evil Queen, Snow White's evil stepmother, in the Cannon Movie Tales's film adaptation of Snow White (1987). In 1989 she played Helena Vesey in Mother Love for the BBC; her portrayal of an obsessive mother who was prepared to do anything, even murder, to keep control of her son won Rigg the 1990 BAFTA for Best Television Actress.

In 1995, she appeared in a film adaptation for television based on Danielle Steel's Zoya as Evgenia, the main character's grandmother.

She appeared on television as Mrs Danvers in Rebecca (1997), winning an Emmy, as well as the PBS production Moll Flanders, and as the amateur detective Mrs Bradley in The Mrs Bradley Mysteries. In this BBC series, first aired in 2000, she played Gladys Mitchell's detective, Dame Beatrice Adela Le Strange Bradley, an eccentric old woman who worked for Scotland Yard as a pathologist. The series was not a critical success and did not return for a second series.

From 1989 until 2003, she hosted the PBS television series Mystery!, shown in the United States by PBS broadcaster WGBH, taking over from Vincent Price, her co-star in Theatre of Blood. 

She also appeared in the second series of Ricky Gervais's comedy Extras, alongside Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe, and in the 2006 film The Painted Veil.

In 2013 she appeared in an episode of Doctor Who in a Victorian-era based story called "The Crimson Horror" alongside her daughter Rachael Stirling, Matt Smith and Jenna-Louise Coleman. The episode had been specially written for her and her daughter by Mark Gatiss and aired as part of series 7. It was not the first time mother and daughter had appeared in the same production, that was in the 2000 NBC film In the Beginning, but the first time she had worked with her daughter and also the first time in her career her roots were accessed to find a Doncaster, Yorkshire, accent.

The same year, Rigg secured a recurring role in the third season of the HBO series Game of Thrones, portraying Lady Olenna Tyrell, a witty and sarcastic political mastermind popularly known as the Queen of Thorns, the paternal grandmother of regular character Margaery Tyrell. Her performance was well received by critics and audiences alike, and earned her an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for the 65th Primetime Emmy Awards in 2013. She reprised her role in season four of Game of Thrones, and in July 2014 received another Guest Actress Emmy nomination. In 2015 and 2016, she again reprised the role in seasons five and six in an expanded role from the books. The character was finally killed off in the seventh season, with Rigg's final performance receiving critical acclaim. In April 2019 Rigg said she had never watched Game of Thrones, before or after her time on the show.

Personal life

In the 1960s, Rigg lived for eight years with director Philip Saville, gaining attention in the tabloids when she disclaimed interest in marrying the older, already-married Saville, saying she had no desire "to be respectable." She was married to Menachem Gueffen, an Israeli painter, from 1973 until their divorce in 1976, and to Archibald Stirling, a theatrical producer and former officer in the Scots Guards, from 25 March 1982, until their divorce in 1990 after his affair with the actress Joely Richardson. With Stirling, Rigg has a daughter, actress Rachael Stirling, who was born in 1977.

Rigg has long been an outspoken critic of feminism, saying in 1969, "Women are in a much stronger position than men."

Rigg is a Patron of International Care & Relief and was for many years the public face of the charity's child sponsorship scheme. She was also Chancellor of the University of Stirling, a ceremonial rather than executive role, and was succeeded by James Naughtie when her ten-year term of office ended on 31 July 2008.

Michael Parkinson, who first interviewed Rigg in 1972, described her as the most desirable woman he ever met, who "radiated a lustrous beauty". A smoker from the age of 18, Rigg was still smoking 20 cigarettes a day in 2009. By December 2017, she had stopped smoking after serious illness led to heart surgery, a cardiac ablation, two months earlier. A devout Christian, she commented that: "My heart had stopped ticking during the procedure, so I was up there and the good Lord must have said, 'Send the old bag down again, I'm not having her yet!'"

In a June 2015 interview with Stephen Bowie of The A.V. Club, Rigg also commented about the chemistry between Patrick Macnee and herself on The Avengers, despite being 16 years apart: "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." She also said about the improvisation of the dialogue: "Not for an instant, no. Well, when I say improvising, Pat and I would sit down and work out approximately what we'd say. It wasn't sort of...who's the American duo? Mike Nichols and Elaine May. It was definitely not that." Asked if she had ever stayed in touch with Macnee (the interview was published two days before Macnee's death and decades after they were reunited for one last time on her short-lived American series Diana): "You'll always be close to somebody that you worked with very intimately for so long, and you become really fond of each other. But we haven't seen each other for a very, very long time."

Her first grandchild, a boy named Jack (born to Rachael Stirling and Elbow frontman Guy Garvey), was born in April 2017.

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Role Year Title	Notes
1968	A Midsummer Night's Dream	Helena
1969	Mini-Killers		Short film
	The Assassination Bureau	Sonya Winter
	On Her Majesty's Secret Service	Teresa "Tracy" di Vicenzo
1970	Julius Caesar	Portia
1971	The Hospital	Barbara Drummond
1973	Theatre of Blood	Edwina Lionheart
1977	A Little Night Music	Countess Charlotte Mittelheim
1981	The Great Muppet Caper	Lady Holiday
1982	Evil Under the Sun	Arlena Marshall
1986	The Worst Witch	Miss Hardbroom
1987	Snow White	The Evil Queen
1994	A Good Man in Africa	Chloe Fanshawe
1999	Parting Shots	Lisa
2005	Heidi	Grandmamma
2006	The Painted Veil	Mother Superior
2015	The Honourable Rebel	Narrator
2017	Breathe	Lady Neville
2021	Last Night in Soho	Miss Collins	Post-production

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1959	A Midsummer Night's Dream	Bit part	TV film
1963	The Sentimental Agent	Francy Wilde	Episode: "A Very Desirable Plot"
1964	Festival	Adriana	Episode: "The Comedy of Errors"
	Armchair Theatre	Anita Fender	Episode: "The Hothouse"
1965	ITV Play of the Week	Bianca	Episode: "Women Beware Women"
1965–68	The Avengers	Emma Peel	Main role (51 episodes)
1970	ITV Saturday Night Theatre	Liz Jardine	Episode: "Married Alive"
1973–74	Diana	Diana Smythe	Main role (15 episodes)
1974	Affairs of the Heart	Grace Gracedew	Episode: "Grace"
1975	In This House of Brede	Philippa	TV film
	The Morecambe & Wise Show	Nell Gwynne	Sketch in Christmas Show
1977	Three Piece Suite	Various	Regular role (6 episodes)
1979	Oresteia	Clytemnestra	TV miniseries
1980	The Marquise	Eloise	TV film
1981	Hedda Gabler	Hedda Gabler	TV film
1982	Play of the Month	Rita Allmers	Episode: Little Eyolf
	Witness for the Prosecution	Christine Vole	TV film
1983	King Lear	Regan	TV film
1985	Bleak House	Lady Honoria Dedlock	TV miniseries
1986	The Worst Witch	Miss Constance Hardbroom	TV film
1987	A Hazard of Hearts	Lady Harriet Vulcan	TV film
1989	The Play on One	Lydia	Episode: "Unexplained Laughter"
	Mother Love	Helena Vesey	TV miniseries British Academy Television Award for Best Actress Broadcast Press Guild Award for Best Actress
1992	Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris	Mme. Colbert	TV film
1993	Road to Avonlea	Lady Blackwell	Episode: "The Disappearance"
	Running Delilah	Judith	TV film
	Screen Two	Baroness Frieda von Stangel	Episode: "Genghis Cohn" Nominated – CableACE Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie
1995	Zoya	Evgenia	TV film
	The Haunting of Helen Walker	Mrs. Grose	TV film
1996	The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders	Mrs. Golightly	TV film
	Samson and Delilah	Mara	TV film
1997	Rebecca	Mrs. Danvers	TV miniseries Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie
1998	The American	Madame de Bellegarde	TV film
1998–2000	The Mrs Bradley Mysteries	Mrs. Adela Bradley	Main role (5 episodes)
2000	In the Beginning	Mature Rebeccah	TV film
2001	Victoria & Albert	Baroness Lehzen	TV miniseries Nominated – Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie
2003	Murder in Mind	Jill Craig	Episode: "Suicide"
	Charles II: The Power and the Passion	Queen Henrietta Maria	TV miniseries
2006	Extras	Herself	Episode: "Daniel Radcliffe"
2013–17	Game of Thrones	Olenna Tyrell	18 episodes Nominated – Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series (2013, 2014, 2015, 2018) Nominated – Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Guest Performer in a Drama Series (2013, 2014)
2013	Doctor Who	Mrs. Winifred Gillyflower	Episode: "The Crimson Horror"
2015, 2017	Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero	Mayor Pink Panda (voice)	3 episodes
	Detectorists	Veronica	6 episodes
2015	You, Me and the Apocalypse	Sutton	5 episodes
	Professor Branestawm Returns	Lady Pagwell	TV film
2017	Victoria	Duchess of Buccleuch	9 episodes
2019	The Snail and the Whale	Narrator	Short television film
2020	All Creatures Great and Small	Mrs. Pumphrey	Upcoming TV series
	Black Narcissus	Mother Dorothea	Upcoming miniseries

Theatre credits

List of selected theatre credits

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1957	The Caucasian Chalk Circle	Natella Abashwili	Theatre Royal, York Festival
1964	King Lear	Cordelia	Royal Shakespeare Company (European/US Tour)
1966	Twelfth Night	Viola	Royal Shakespeare Company
1970	Abelard and Heloise	Heloise	Wyndham's Theatre, London
1971	Abelard and Heloise	Heloise	Brooks Atkinson Theatre, New York
1972	Macbeth	Lady Macbeth	Old Vic Theatre, London
1972	Jumpers	Dorothy Moore	Old Vic Theatre, London
1973	The Misanthrope	Célimène	Old Vic Theatre, London
1974	Pygmalion	Eliza Doolittle	Albery Theatre, London
1975	The Misanthrope	Célimène	St. James Theatre, New York
1978	Night and Day	Ruth Carson	Phoenix Theatre, London
1982	Colette	Colette	US national tour
1983	Heartbreak House	Lady Ariadne Utterword	Theatre Royal Haymarket, London
1985	Little Eyolf	Rita Allmers	Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, London
1985	Antony and Cleopatra	Cleopatra	Chichester Festival Theatre, UK
1986	Wildfire	Bess	Theatre Royal, Bath & Phoenix Theatre, London
1987	Follies	Phyllis Rogers Stone	Shaftesbury Theatre, London
1990	Love Letters	Melissa	Stage Door Theatre, San Francisco
1992	Putting It Together		Old Fire Station Theatre, Oxford
1992	Berlin Bertie	Rosa	Royal Court Theatre, London
1992	Medea	Medea	Almeida Theatre, London
1993	Medea	Medea	Wyndham's Theatre, London
1994	Medea	Medea	Longacre Theatre, New York
1995	Mother Courage and Her Children	Mother Courage	National Theatre, London
1996	Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf	Martha	Almeida Theatre, London
1997	Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf	Martha	Aldwych Theatre, London
1998	Phaedra	Phaedra	Almeida at the Albery Theatre, London & BAM in Brooklyn
1998	Britannicus	Agrippina	Almeida at the Albery Theatre, London & BAM in Brooklyn
2001	Humble Boy	Flora Humble	National Theatre, London
2002	The Hollow Crown		International Tour: New Zealand, Australia, Stratford-upon-Avon, UK
2004	Suddenly, Last Summer	Violet Venable	Albery Theatre, London
2006	Honour	Honour	Wyndham's Theatre, London
2007	All About My Mother	Huma Rojo	Old Vic Theatre, London
2008	The Cherry Orchard	Ranyevskaya	Chichester Festival Theatre, UK
2009	Hay Fever	Judith Bliss	Chichester Festival Theatre, UK
2011	Pygmalion	Mrs. Higgins	Garrick Theatre, London
2018	My Fair Lady	Mrs. Higgins	Vivian Beaumont Theatre, New York

Honours, awards and nominations

Rigg received honorary degrees from the University of Stirling in 1988, the University of Leeds in 1992, and London South Bank University in 1996.

Rigg was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1988 New Year Honours and a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) for services to drama in the 1994 Birthday Honours.

In 2014, Rigg received the Will Award, presented by the Shakespeare Theatre Company, along with Stacy Keach and John Hurt.

On 25 October 2015, to mark 50 years of Emma Peel, the BFI (British Film Institute) screened an episode of The Avengers followed by an onstage interview with Rigg about her time in the television series.

Year	Award	Category	Work	Result
1967	Emmy Award	Best Actress in a Drama Series	The Avengers	Nominated
1968				Nominated
1970	Laurel Award	Female New Face	The Assassination Bureau	Nominated
1971	Tony Award	Best Actress in a Play	Abelard and Heloise	Nominated
1972	Golden Globe	Best Supporting Actress (motion picture)	The Hospital	Nominated
1975	Tony Award	Best Actress in a Play	The Misanthrope	Nominated
	Drama Desk Award	Outstanding Actress in a Play		Nominated
	Emmy Award	Best Actress in a TV Movie	In This House of Brede	Nominated
1990	BAFTA TV Award	Best Actress	Mother Love	Won
	Broadcasting Press Guild Award	Best Actress		Won
1992	Evening Standard Award	Best Actress	Medea	Won
1994	Olivier Award	Best Actress		Nominated
	Drama Desk Award	Outstanding Actress in a Play		Nominated
	Tony Award	Best Actress in a Play		Won
1996	CableACE Award	Supporting Actress in a Movie or Miniseries	Screen Two (1985) – episode "Genghis Cohn"	Nominated
	Olivier Award	Best Actress	Mother Courage	Nominated
	Evening Standard Award	Best Actress	Mother Courage and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf	Won
1997	Olivier Award	Best Actress	Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf	Nominated
	Emmy Award	Best Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or TV Movie	Rebecca	Won
1999	Olivier Award	Best Actress	Britannicus and Phedre	Nominated
2000	Special BAFTA Award[47] non-competitive	John Steed's partners shared with Honor Blackman, Linda Thorson and Joanna Lumley.	The Avengers (and The New Avengers)	Awarded
2002	Emmy Award	Best Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or TV Movie	Victoria & Albert	Nominated
2013	Critics' Choice Television Award	Best Guest Performer in a Drama Series	Game of Thrones	Nominated
	Emmy Award	Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series		Nominated
2014	Critics' Choice Television Award	Best Guest Performer in a Drama Series		Nominated
	Emmy Award	Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series		Nominated
2015	Emmy Award	Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series		Nominated
2018	Drama Desk Award	Best Featured Actress in a Musical	My Fair Lady	Nominated
	Tony Award	Best Featured Actress in a Musical		Nominated
	Emmy Award	Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series	Game of Thrones	Nominated
2019	Canneseries	Variety Icon Award	N/A	Won