Diana Rigg could hold a television audience as the quick-thinking Emma Peel, then return to the stage for roles in Shakespeare, Tom Stoppard and Euripides. Her career joined popular screen performances to demanding theatre work: from the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre to Broadway, she moved between forms without being defined by any one of them. The distinction brought her a Tony Award for Medea, a BAFTA for Mother Love and, in 1994, a damehood for services to drama.

From Doncaster to the stage

Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg was born in Doncaster on 20 July 1938. Her father, Louis, worked in engineering and went to India for work on the railway. Rigg spent much of her early childhood in Bikaner, Rajasthan, before returning to England and attending Fulneck Girls School, a boarding school near Pudsey in Yorkshire. She later said that Yorkshire had played a greater part in shaping her character than India had.

Rigg trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London from 1955 to 1957. Her professional stage debut came in 1957, as Natella Abashwili in The Caucasian Chalk Circle at the York Festival. In 1959 she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, beginning a substantial association with the classical repertoire. Her parts included Cordelia in King Lear, Viola in Twelfth Night and Adriana in The Comedy of Errors.

After leaving the company in 1967, Rigg continued to take on a wide range of stage work. She made her Broadway debut in 1971 in Abelard and Heloïse, and was a member of the National Theatre Company at the Old Vic from 1972 to 1975. There she played Dorothy Moore in Tom Stoppard’s Jumpers; later, in Night and Day, she played Ruth Carson. Her roles also included Lady Macbeth and Cleopatra, parts that drew on the commanding presence she would bring to screen characters.

Emma Peel and the screen

Rigg became widely known as Emma Peel in the British television series The Avengers, appearing in 51 episodes between 1965 and 1968 opposite Patrick Macnee. The character was intelligent, capable and an equal partner to Macnee’s John Steed. Her performance became one of the series’ defining features, but Rigg was uncomfortable with the attention that came with being cast as a sex symbol. She also objected to the pay she received: in a 2019 interview, she recalled holding out for a rise from £150 to £450 a week for her second series, and described the episode as an early fight for equal pay.

In 1969 she played Teresa “Tracy” di Vicenzo, James Bond’s wife, in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, opposite George Lazenby. Her film work ranged from Julius Caesar and The Hospital to The Great Muppet Caper and the Agatha Christie adaptation Evil Under the Sun. On television she played Helena Vesey in the BBC serial Mother Love, winning the 1990 BAFTA for Best Television Actress, and Mrs Danvers in the 1997 adaptation of Rebecca, for which she received an Emmy.

Later parts introduced her to further audiences. She played Olenna Tyrell in Game of Thrones from 2013 to 2017, receiving four Emmy nominations for the role. She also appeared in the BBC comedy Detectorists alongside her daughter, actor Rachael Stirling, and played Mrs Pumphrey in the first series of All Creatures Great and Small. Her final film role was in Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho, completed shortly before her death and released in 2021.

Returning to the theatre

Rigg’s stage career continued alongside her screen work. In the 1990s, her performance as the title character in Euripides’ Medea took her from the Almeida Theatre in London to Broadway. She won the 1994 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. She later played Mother Courage at the National Theatre and Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at the Almeida and the Aldwych. In 2018, she returned to Broadway as Mrs Higgins in My Fair Lady, earning a further Tony nomination.

Her honours reflected work across both stage and screen. Rigg was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1988 and a Dame Commander in 1994, in each case for services to drama. She won a special BAFTA in 2000 and received the Will Award from the Shakespeare Theatre Company in 2014. From 1998 to 2008 she was Chancellor of the University of Stirling, a ceremonial role; she also held an Oxford visiting professorship in contemporary theatre for a year.

Work beyond the leading roles

Rigg’s screen career included more than the best-known characters. She played Lady Dedlock in the BBC adaptation of Bleak House, Miss Hardbroom in The Worst Witch, and the Evil Queen in a film adaptation of Snow White. In 1989, Mother Love gave her a role of sustained menace as an obsessive mother, while Rebecca brought a further award-winning performance as Mrs Danvers. She also hosted the American public television programme Mystery! from 1989 to 2003.

Her later television appearances included Doctor Who, in an episode written for her and Rachael Stirling, and Victoria. The mother and daughter also appeared together in Detectorists. Rigg’s work across these productions shows how her career remained active across generations of television, while her theatre performances continued to bring her back to London, regional British stages and New York.

Why Diana Rigg deserves a place in British Legacy

Diana Rigg deserves a place in British Legacy because her career connects several important parts of British performance culture. She trained at RADA, made her professional debut at the York Festival and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1959. Her work with the company and later with the National Theatre linked a long career in popular television to major institutions of British theatre. She could play Shakespearean roles such as Cordelia and Cleopatra, take on new work by Tom Stoppard, and lead a production of Euripides’ Medea that earned her a Tony Award. These achievements make her career more than a sequence of famous screen appearances: they show an actor repeatedly returning to the stage and its demanding repertory.

Her British significance also rests on the reach of her television work. Emma Peel became a memorable figure in a British series, while Rigg’s later roles in Mother Love, Detectorists and All Creatures Great and Small carried her performances into different periods of television. Her experience on The Avengers also gave her a public platform to speak about unequal pay in the acting profession. Alongside her awards and her service as Chancellor of the University of Stirling, that contribution offers a specific account of her place in British life: she worked within its theatre and broadcasting traditions, helped define roles remembered well beyond them, and brought professional questions about women’s treatment in the industry into public discussion.

Sources

Diana Rigg (revision 1374318875)

Adapted in part from Diana Rigg by Wikipedia contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Text has been edited and combined with the existing article; this adapted text is shared under the same licence. Contributor history.