Diana Rigg

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Emmy Awards
Diana Rigg
Diana Rigg as Countess Tracy di Vicenzo in On Her Majesty's Secret Service - Promotional photo
Birth name	Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg
Born	July 20, 1938 (age 68) Doncaster, South Yorkshire, England
Spouse(s)	Archibald Stirling 1982-1990 Menachem Gueffen 1973-1976
Notable roles	Emma Peel, The Avengers Tracy Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie 1997 Rebecca
Tony Awards

Best Actress in a Play 1994 Medea
BAFTA Awards

Special award 2000 Women of The Avengers Best Actress (TV) 1990 Mother Love

Dame (Enid) Diana (Elizabeth) Rigg, DBE, (born 20 July 1938) is an English actress. She is probably best known for her portrayals of Emma Peel in The Avengers and Tracy Bond in the 1969 James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

1 Early life
2 Career
3 Private life
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Early life

Rigg was born in the South Yorkshire town of Doncaster^[1], to Louis Rigg and Beryl Helliwell; her father was a railway engineer who had been born in Yorkshire. She lived in India between the ages of two and eight^[1] and then attended the Moravian school in Fulneck, near Pudsey.

[edit] Career

Rigg is particularly known for her role in the British 1960s television series The Avengers, where she played the sexy secret agent Emma Peel. Her 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 Caucasian Chalk Circle in 1955, aged 17.

Rigg tried out for the role of Emma Peel on a whim, without ever having seen the programme. Although she was hugely successful in the role, she did not like the lack of privacy that television brought. She also did not like the way that she was treated by ABC Weekend TV; after a dozen episodes she discovered that she was being paid less than the cameraman.

Diana Rigg as Mrs Emma Peel

For the second series she held out for a raise in pay (from GB£90 to GB£180 weekly), 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.^[2] After leaving The Avengers she appeared as the title character in the telemovie The Marquise, which was based on a play by Noel Coward.

She also returned to the stage, including playing two Tom Stoppard leads, Ruth Carson in Night and Day and Dorothy Moore in Jumpers. A nude scene with Keith Michell in Abelard and Heloise led to a notorious description of her as 'built like a brick mausoleum with insufficient flying buttresses', by the acerbic critic John Simon.

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 1986, she took a leading role in the West End production of Stephen Sondheim's musical Follies.

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. The experience was not a happy one, due to a personality clash with Bond actor George Lazenby. She has often spoken candidly, but amusingly, about the clashes they had on set, and Lazenby himself is now philosophical about this period of his life. Rigg admitted to eating food with garlic just before her kissing scenes with Lazenby. Nevertheless, she received great reviews and is considered one of the best Bond girls. Her other films include The Assassination Bureau (1969), The Hospital (1971), Theatre of Blood (a Grand Guignol tongue-in-cheek movie in which she plays Vincent Price's daughter who helps him carry out his murderous plans which are set to the grimmest scenes in Shakespearean literature) (1973), and A Little Night Music (1977).

In the 1980s, after reading stinging reviews of a stage performance she had given, Rigg was inspired to compile the worst theatrical reviews she could find into a tongue-in-cheek (and best-selling) compilation, entitled No Turn Unstoned. In 1988, she played the Wicked Queen in the Cannon adaption of Snow White. 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 Diana the 1989 BAFTA for best actress.

In 1986 she presented the Scottish Television series Held in Trust, which focused on the work of the National Trust for Scotland and some of its most famous treasures.

In the 1990s she had triumphs with roles at the Almeida Theatre in Islington, including Medea in 1993 (for which she received the Best Actress Tony Award), Mother Courage in 1995 and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 1996. On television she has appeared as Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca and as the amateur detective Mrs. Bradley in The Mrs Bradley Mysteries.

In this 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. Sadly, despite good central performances—particularly from Rigg herself, who would, to great comic effect, address the camera directly (sample dialogue, delivered direct to camera: "There are three golden rules to bringing up children... sadly no-one knows what they are...) 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!, taking over from Vincent Price, her co-star from Theatre of Blood. Her TV career in America has been varied; most famously she starred in her own series Diana, but it was not successful.

Rigg has continued to perform on stage in London, the latest play being a drama entitled Honour which had a limited but successful run in 2006.

Although she does not consider herself a singer, her performances in A Little Night Music, Follies and other stage musicals have been well received by audiences and critics alike. She made a highly memorable appearance with Morecambe and Wise in 1976, in which she played Nell Gwynne in a musical pastiche, joining Eric and Ernie to sing “How Could You Believe Me When I Said I Loved You When You Know I've Been A Liar All My Life?”.

She also appeared in the second season of Ricky Gervais' hit comedy, Extras, alongside Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe.

[edit] Private life

She lived with Philip Saville for some time. She married Menachem Gueffen, an Israeli painter, which lasted from 1973 to 1976, and Archibald Stirling, a theatrical producer and former officer in the Scots Guards which lasted from 1982 to 1990. By Stirling she has a daughter, the actress Rachael Stirling, who was born in 1977.

Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1988 and a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1994.

Patrick Macnee, her co-star in The Avengers, described Diana Rigg in a July 2006 documentary on BBC 4 as "just like an angel coming down from heaven."

Diana Rigg is a Patron of International Care & Relief and was for many years the public face of the charity's child sponsorship scheme.

Rigg is Chancellor of the University of Stirling.

[edit] References

^ ^a ^b Meet... Dame Diana Rigg, BBC South Yorkshire. accessed on 14 July 2006.
^ J.G. Lane, Diana Rigg Biography, accessed 15 December 2006

[edit] External links

Awards
Preceded by Greta Scacchi Rasputin	Emmy Award Outstanding Supporting Actress - Miniseries or a Movie 1997 Rebecca	Succeeded by Mare Winningham George Wallace

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Diana Rigg

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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