(20 July 1938 - 10 September 2020)
The British actress Diana Rigg, who has died aged 82 from cancer, will be remembered as Mrs Emma Peel, the female sidekick (with kick being the operative word) of John Steed (Patrick Macnee), hero of the 1960s television series The Avengers. Taking over from Honor Blackman’s Cathy Gale, she took on the physical action with great aplomb. However, Rigg was no mere decoration for the male chauvinist Steed and his ilk, because she always made her own mark with feisty independence.
Yorkshire-born Diana Rigg was brought up in India where her father worked as an engineer. Back in Britain she joined Rada at the start of an outstanding stage career in which, following repertory, she joined Peter Hall’s newly-formed Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon from 1960 and later worked at the National and then the Almeida. She excelled in Shakespeare and other works by Molière, Shaw, Stoppard, Brecht, Tennessee Williams, etc. She also played Phyllis Stone in the first London production of Sondheim's Follies. Her first television appearance was in Peter Hall’s pre-RSC TV movie version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Albert Finney, Charles Laughton and Vanessa Redgrave. More TV led to The Avengers and Peter Hall’s 1968 cinema film of Shakespeare’s Dream in which Rigg played Helena with Judi Dench, David Warner and Helen Mirren.
More films materialised including The Assassination Bureau, Julius Caesar (as Portia) with Charlton Heston but, before that there was On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, with Rigg as James Bond's only wife, Tracy di Vicenzo. Other films included The Hospital, Theatre of Blood with Vincent Price, playing Charlotte in Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music (with a miscast Elizabeth Taylor as Desirḗe), The Great Muppet Caper, Agatha Christie’s Evil Under the Sun, the Evil Queen in Snow White, Genghis Kohn with Antony Sher, A Good Man in Africa with Sean Connery, Michael Winner’s Passing Shots, Heidi with Max von Sydow, The Painted Veil and Andy Serkis’s Breathe.
Apart from The Avengers, television played a large part in Rigg’s career, with Hedda Gabler, King Lear (as Regan to Laurence Olivier’s Lear), Bleak House, Rebecca (as Mrs Danvers) and, of course, Game of Thrones, as Olenna Tyrell. After that she appeared with her daughter Rachael Stirling in Detectorists and Victoria, as the Duchess of Buccleuch. She is lately to be seen playing Mrs Pumphrey in the remake of All Creatures Great and Small. Her last film work was on Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho (due for release in April 2021) and a TV adaptation of Black Narcissus. Rigg’s first husband was the Israeli painter Menachem Gueffen whom she divorced. With the theatre producer Archie Stirling she had her daughter Rachael Stirling. They subsequently married and divorced. Diana Rigg won many awards for her work including a Bafta, a Tony, an Emmy and an Evening Standard Theatre Award. She was made a CBE in 1988 and a Dame Commander in 1994.
MICHAEL DARVELL
