Diana Rigg Biography

Dame Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg, DBE (born 20 July 1938) is an English actress. She played Emma Peel in the 1960s TV series The Avengers, and plays Olenna Tyrell in Game of Thrones, Sutton in You, Me and the Apocalypse, and opposite her daughter, Rachael Stirling, in Detectorists. She has had an extensive career in film and 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 CBE in 1988 and a Dame in 1994.

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); Countess Teresa di Vicenzo, wife of James Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969); Lady Holiday in The Great Muppet Caper (1981); and Arlene Marshall in Evil Under the Sun (1982). She won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for the 1989 BBC miniseries Mother Love, and an Emmy Award for her role as Mrs. Danvers in the 1997 adaptation of Rebecca.

Biography

Early life and education

Rigg was born in Doncaster, then in the West Riding of Yorkshire, now in South Yorkshire to Louis Rigg (1903-1968) and Beryl Hilda (ne 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.

Hindi was her second language in those young years (and she still today enjoys using a smattering of words and phrases when ordering Indian food). She was then sent to a boarding school, the Moravian School in Fulneck, near Pudsey. She disliked 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 Sin 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 in the RADA production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle at the York Festival in 1957. Her role was Natasha Abashwilli.

She returned to the stage in the Ronald Millar play Abelard and Helose 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 Almodvar.

She appeared in 2008 in The Cherry Orchard at the Chichester Festival Theatre, returning there in 2009 to star in Nol 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.

Film and television career

Rigg appeared in the British 1960s television series The Avengers (1965-68) playing the secret agent Mrs 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 of Emma Peel 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. She also did not like the way that she was treated by the Associated British Corporation (ABC). After a dozen episodes she discovered that she was being paid less than a cameraman. For her second season she held out for a pay rise from 150 a week to 450, but there was still no question of her staying for a third year. Patrick Macnee, her co-star in the series, 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.

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 Nol 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 stars Laurence Olivier in the title role. As Lady Dedlock she costarred with Denholm Elliot 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 1989 BAFTA for Best Television Actress.

In the 1990s, 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 season.

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. Her TV career in America has been varied. She starred in her own sitcom Diana (1973), but it was not successful.

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 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.

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. 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, being 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, but in 2011 said she had given up smoking because she "had to".

Honours

Rigg received honorary degrees from the University of Stirling in 1988 and the University of Leeds in 1992.

Rigg was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1988 and a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1994.

In 2014, Rigg received the Will Award, presented by the Shakespeare Theatre Company, along with Stacey 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.

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1968	'	Helena
1969	Mini-Killers		Short film
1969	'	Sonya Winter
1969	On Her Majesty's Secret Service	Contessa Teresa "Tracy" Draco di Vicenzo/Bond
1970	Julius Caesar	Portia
1971	'	Barbara Drummond
1973	Theatre of Blood	Edwina Lionheart
1977	'	Countess Charlotte Mittelheim
1981	'	Lady Holiday
1982	Evil Under the Sun	Arlena Marshall
1987	Snow White	The Evil Queen, Snow White's evil stepmother
1994	'	Chloe Fanshawe
1999	Parting Shots	Lisa
2005	Heidi	Grandmamma
2006	'	Mother Superior
2015	The Honourable Rebel	Narrator
2017	Breathe	Lady Neville	Post-production

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1959	'	Bit part	TV film
1963	'	Francy Wilde	Episode: "A Very Desirable Plot"
1964	Festival	Adriana	Episode: "The Comedy of Errors"
1964	Armchair Theatre	Anita Fender	Episode: "The Hothouse"
1965	ITV Play of the Week	Bianca	Episode: "Women Beware Women"
1965-68	'	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
1975	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	'	Eloise	TV film
1981	Hedda Gabler	Hedda Gabler	TV film
1982	Play of the Month (BBC)	Rita Allmers	Episode: Little Eyolf
1982	Witness for the Prosecution	Christine Vole	TV film
1983	King Lear	Regan	TV film
1985	Bleak House	Lady Honoria Dedlock	TV miniseries
1986	'	Miss Constance Hardbroom	TV film
1987	'	Lady Harriet Vulcan	TV film
1989	'	Lydia	Episode: "Unexplained Laughter"
1989	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"
1993	Running Delilah	Judith	TV film
1993	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
1995	'	Mrs. Grose	TV film
1996	'	Mrs. Golightly	TV film
1996	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	'	Madame de Bellegarde	TV film
1998-2000	'	Mrs. Adela Bradley	Main role
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"
2003	Charles II: The Power and The Passion	Queen Henrietta Maria	TV miniseries
2006	Extras	Herself	Episode: "Daniel Radcliffe"
2013-present	Game of Thrones	Olenna Tyrell	Seasons 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, Online Film & Television Association Award for Best Guest Actress in a Drama Series (2013, 2014) Nominated - Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series (2013, 2014, 2015) Nominated - Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Guest Performer in a Drama Series (2013, 2014) Nominated - Online Film & Television Association Award for Best Guest Actress in a Drama Series (2015)
2013	Doctor Who	Mrs. Winifred Gillyflower	Episode: "The Crimson Horror"
2015	Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero	Mayor Pink Panda (voice)	Episode: "Babypocalypse"
2015	You, Me and the Apocalypse	Sutton	TV series
2015	Professor Branestawm Returns	Lady Pagwell	TV film
2015	Detectorists	Veronica	TV series

Theatre

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 City
1972	Macbeth	Lady Macbeth	Old Vic Theatre, London
1972	Jumpers	Dorothy Moore	National Theatre, London
1974	Pygmalion	Eliza Doolittle	Albery Theatre, London
1978	Night and Day	Ruth Carson	Phoenix Theatre, London
1975	'	Climne	National Theatre, London
1975	'	Climne	St. James Theatre, New York City
1982	Colette	Colette	US national tour
1983	Heartbreak House	Lady Ariadne Utter word	Theatre Royal Haymarket, London
1985	Little Eyolf	Rita Allmers	Lyric Theatre, 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 City
1995	Mother Courage	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, NY
1998	Britannicus	Agrippina	Almeida at the Albery Theatre, London & BAM in Brooklyn, NY
2001	Humble Boy	Flora Humble	National Theatre, London & Chichester Festival Theatre, UK
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	'	Ranyevskaya	Chichester Festival Theatre, UK
2009	Hay Fever	Judith Bliss	Chichester Festival Theatre, UK
2011	Pygmalion	Mrs. Higgins	Garrick Theatre, London

Awards and nominations

Year	Award	Category	Work	Result
1967	Emmy Award	Best Actress in a Drama Series	The Avengers
1968	Emmy Award	Best Actress in a Drama Series	The Avengers
1970	Laurel Award	Female New Face	The Assassination Bureau
1971	Tony Award	Best Actress in a Play	Abelard and Heloise
1972	Golden Globe	Best Supporting Actress (motion picture)	The Hospital
1975	Tony Award	Best Actress in a Play	The Misanthrope
1975	Drama Desk Award	Outstanding Actress in a Play	The Misanthrope
1975	Emmy Award	Best Actress in a TV Movie	In This House of Brede
1990	BAFTA TV Award	Best Actress	Mother Love
1990	Broadcasting Press Guild Award	Best Actress	Mother Love
1992	Evening Standard Award	Best Actress	Medea
1994	Olivier Award	Best Actress	Medea
1994	Tony Award	Best Actress in a Play	Medea
1996	CableACE Award	Supporting Actress in a Movie or Miniseries	Screen Two (1985) - episode "Genghis Cohn"
1996	Olivier Award	Best Actress	Mother Courage
1996	Evening Standard Award	Best Actress	Mother Courage and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
1997	Olivier Award	Best Actress	Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
1997	Emmy Award	Best Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or TV Movie	Rebecca
1999	Olivier Award	Best Actress	Britannicus and Phedre
2000	Special BAFTA Award 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
2013	Critics' Choice Television Award	Best Guest Performer in a Drama Series	Game of Thrones
	Emmy Award	Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series	Game of Thrones
	Online Film & Television Association Award	Best Guest Actress in a Drama Series	Game of Thrones
2014	Critics' Choice Television Award	Best Guest Performer in a Drama Series	Game of Thrones
	Emmy Award	Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series	Game of Thrones
	Online Film & Television Association Award	Best Guest Actress in a Drama Series	Game of Thrones
2015	Emmy Award	Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series	Game of Thrones
	Online Film & Television Association Award	Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series	Game of Thrones