Dame Diana Rigg has sadly died at the age of 82 leaving behind a glistening portfolio of iconic performances and characters which fans adored as recently as the last couple of years.
The British actress hailed from the golden era of TV and film with memorable early roles in series such as The Avengers, to her formidable role as Olenna Tyrell in Game of Thrones.
Rigg, born in Doncaster on July 20, 1938, was as accomplished an actress as they come. She began her acting career on the stage with roles in the Royal Shakespeare Company productions after graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.
In an interview with Variety, Rigg once said of her career: ‘Nothing was planned. My ambitions were simply to work, and I think I worked my way through life.’
Rigg left the Royal Shakespeare Company and landed her first major TV role in The Avengers, playing secret agent Emma Peel. It propelled Rigg to fame in the UK and she became a sex symbol, something which she struggled to get used to.
However for a theatre actress, moving to TV work was looked down upon and Rigg once recalled: ‘When I got the job of The Avengers, he [RSC head] said, “She’s going to waste herself in television and silly movies”.
‘From the classical theatre into television was considered a bit of a step down. They scorned you.’
It was during her stint on The Avengers that Rigg proved to be just as hard-as-nails as her character when she pushed for equal pay, becoming one of few actresses to do so at the time.
‘That was my first battle with male authority,’ Rigg recalled, adding: ‘I discovered after a while in The Avengers that I was earning less than the cameraman.
‘I made a bit of a song and dance about it and demanded more. I was ahead of the game, in that respect, because nobody backed me up. There was no sisterhood. In those days, you were on your own.’
In 1969, Rigg made history when she starred in James Bond movie On Her Majesty’s Secret Service as Tracy Bond – the only official wife of 007 in the franchise’s history.
Over the next few decades, Rigg would star in a variety of movies and TV shows such as Doctor Who, while also continuing to tread the theatre boards in productions such as Medea, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and My Fair Lady as recently as 2018.
But it was her role as the fearless and brilliantly scheming Olenna Tyrell in HBO fantasy series Game of Thrones that would introduce Rigg to a whole new audience and fuel her stardom in her later years.
Rigg portrayed the much-loved character from season three until seven, starring alongside Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Peter Dinklage and Charles Dance. Olenna’s main story arc saw her plotting with her granddaughter Margaery Tyrell (Natalie Dormer) to marry into the Lannister family in a bid to win power in Westeros.
Her performance earned Rigg two Emmy nominations for outstanding guest actress in a drama series.
Sharing her thoughts on the iconic character, Rigg told Entertainment Weekly: ‘I loved the complexity of Olenna.
‘She was a political woman, and she played the game brilliantly. Anything and everything executed ruthlessly for the survival of her family, which is historical in a way, like the Borgias and various other famous families.’
Although she wasn’t sentimental over the character after being killed off, stating: ‘You move on.’
Over the course of her career, Rigg also earned a best actress Emmy nomination for The Avengers before eventually winning best supporting actress in a miniseries or TV movie for her role in Rebecca.
In 1994, she won the best actress in a play Tony award for her performance in Medea and the best actress Bafta TV award for Mother Love in 1990.
Rigg had been married twice – to Menachem Gueffen from 1973 until 1976, and then to Archie Stirling from 1982 to 1990. She shared daughter Rachel Stirling with her second husband.
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