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Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg (20 July 1938-10 September 2020) was an English actress of stage and screen.
Her roles include Emma Peel in the TV series The Avengers (1965-1968); Countess Teresa di Vicenzo, wife of James Bond, in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969); Olenna Tyrell in Game of Thrones (2013-2017); and the title role in Medea in the West End in 1993 followed by Broadway a year later. 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 Abelard & Heloise in 1971. Her role as Emma Peel made her a sex symbol. For her role in Medea, both in London and New York, she won the 1994 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play and became a four-time Laurence Olivier Award nominee. She was appointed CBE in 1988 and a Dame in 1994 for services to drama.
Rigg appeared in numerous TV series and films, playing 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 Rebecca (1997). Her other television credits include You, Me and the Apocalypse (2015), Detectorists (2015), the Doctor Who episode The Crimson Horror (2013) with her daughter, Rachael Stirling, and playing Mrs Pumphrey in All Creatures Great and Small (2020). Her final role was in Edgar Wright's 2021 psychological horror film Last Night in Soho, completed just before her death.
Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg was born on 20 July 1938 in Doncaster, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, now in South Yorkshire, to Louis and Beryl Hilda Rigg.
Between the ages of two months and eight years Rigg lived in Bikaner, Rajasthan, India, where her father worked his way up to become a railway executive in the Bikaner State Railway. She spoke Hindi as her second language in those years.
Rigg's career in film, television and the theatre was wide-ranging, including roles in the Royal Shakespeare Company between 1959 and 1967, including Gwendolen in Jean Anouilh's Becket, Cordelia in King Lear and Adriana in The Comedy of Errors. Her professional debut was as Natasha Abashwilli in the RADA production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle at the York Festival in 1957.
From 1965 to 1968 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. She replaced 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 and was not comfortable in her position as a sex symbol.
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 1973-74, 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 a play by Noël Coward. She appeared in the Yorkshire Television production of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler (1981) as Hedda, 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 Charles Dickens's Bleak House (BBC, 1985).
In 1986, she played Miss Hardbroom in a Central Television adaptation of The Worst Witch, starring opposite Tim Curry. The following year, she played the Evil Queen, Snow White's evil stepmother, in the Cannon Movie Tales 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 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.
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 which she played a nun.
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 direct with her daughter and the first time in her career her roots were accessed to find a Doncaster, Yorkshire, accent.
That same year Rigg was cast in 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.
In 2015 and 2018, she received two additional Guest Actress Emmy nominations. The character was killed off in the seventh season, with Rigg's final performance receiving wide critical acclaim.
In April 2019, Rigg said she had never watched Game of Thrones, before or after her time on the show.
From 2015 to 2017, she appeared in the BBC Four comedy series Detectorists in the role of Veronica, the mother of protagonist Andy Stone’s wife Becky, played by her own daughter Rachael Stirling.
During autumn 2019, Rigg was filming the role of Mrs Pumphrey at Broughton Hall, near Skipton, for All Creatures Great and Small. Rigg died after the filming of the first season had been completed. Her final performance was in the British psychological horror film Last Night in Soho, in which she had a major supporting role. The film was in post-production at the time of her death and is dedicated to her memory.
Rigg died at her daughter Rachael Stirling's home in London on 10 September 2020, at the age of 82.
More information: The Guardian
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