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Diana Rigg is a Actor British born on 20 july 1938 at Doncaster (United-kingdom)

Diana Rigg

Diana Rigg
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Birth name Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg
Nationality United-kingdom
Birth 20 july 1938 at Doncaster (United-kingdom)
Death 10 september 2020 (at 82 years)

Dame Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg, DBE (born 20 July 1938) is an English actress. She is known for the role of Emma Peel in the TV series The Avengers, which she appeared in from 1965 to 1968. She has also had an extensive career in the theatre, including playing the title role in Medea, both in London and New York. For this role, she won the 1994 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. Considered a sex symbol she was made a CBE in 1988 and a Dame in 1994.

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 the 1971 production of Abelard & Heloise. Her film roles include Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1968); Countess Teresa di Vicenzo, wife of James Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969); Lady Holiday in The Great Muppet Caper (1981); and Arlene Marshall in Evil Under the Sun (1982). In 1989, she starred in the BBC miniseries Mother Love, for which she won a BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress. For her role as Mrs. Danvers in the 1997 adaptation of Rebecca, she won an Emmy Award. Since 2013, she has played Lady Olenna Tyrell in the HBO series Game of Thrones.

Biography

Early life and education
Rigg was born in Doncaster, then in the West Riding of Yorkshire, now in South Yorkshire to Louis Rigg (1903–1968) and Beryl Hilda (née Helliwell; 1908–1981); her father was a railway engineer who had been born in Yorkshire. Between the ages of two months and eight years Rigg lived in Bikaner, India, where her father was employed as a railway executive.

Hindi was her second language in those young years (and she still today enjoys using a smattering of words and phrases when ordering Indian food). She was then sent to a boarding school, the Moravian School in Fulneck, near Pudsey. She disliked her boarding school, where she felt like a fish out of water, but she believes that Yorkshire played a greater part in shaping her character than India did. She trained as an actress at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art from 1955-57.


Theatre career
Rigg's 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 RADA production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle at the York Festival in 1957. Her role was Natasha Abashwilli.

A return to the stage and a nude scene with Keith Michell in the Ronald Millar play Abelard and Heloise in 1970 led to a notorious description of her as 'built like a brick basilica with insufficient flying buttresses', by the acerbic critic John Simon. (Simon's line is often rendered incorrectly, with "mausoleum" in place of "basilica."). Following its success in London, she made her Broadway debut with the play in 1971, earning the first of three Tony Award nominations for Best Actress in a Play. She received her second nomination in 1975, for The Misanthrope. A member of the National Theatre Company at the Old Vic from 1972 to 1975, Rigg took leading roles in premiere productions of two Tom Stoppard plays, Dorothy Moore in Jumpers (National Theatre, 1972) and Ruth Carson in Night and Day (Phoenix Theatre, 1978).

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 1987 she took a leading role in the West End production of Stephen Sondheim's musical Follies.

In the 1990s, she had triumphs with roles at the Almeida Theatre in Islington, including Medea in 1992 (which transferred to the Wyndham's Theatre in 1993 and then Broadway in 1994, for which she received the Tony Award for Best Actress), Mother Courage at the National Theatre in 1995 and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at the Almeida Theatre in 1996 (which transferred to the Aldwych Theatre in 1997).

In 2004, she appeared as Violet Venable in Sheffield Theatres' production of Tennessee Williams's play Suddenly Last Summer, which transferred to the Albery Theatre. In 2006, she appeared at the Wyndham's Theatre in London's West End in a drama entitled Honour which had a limited but successful run. In 2007, she appeared as Huma Rojo in the Old Vic's production of All About My Mother, adapted by Samuel Adamson and based on the film of the same title directed by Pedro Almodóvar.

She appeared in 2008 in The Cherry Orchard at the Chichester Festival Theatre, returning there in 2009 to star in Noël Coward's Hay Fever. In 2011 she played Mrs Higgins in Pygmalion at the Garrick Theatre, opposite Rupert Everett and Kara Tointon, having played Eliza Doolittle 37 years earlier at the Albery Theatre.


Film and television career
Rigg appeared in the cult British 1960s television series The Avengers (1965–67) playing the secret agent Mrs Emma Peel in 51 episodes, replacing Elizabeth Shepherd at very short notice when Shepherd was dropped from the role after filming two episodes. Rigg auditioned for the role of Emma Peel 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. She also did not like the way that she was treated by the Associated British Corporation (ABC). After a dozen episodes she discovered that she was being paid less than a cameraman. For her second season she held out for a pay rise from £150 a week to £450, 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.

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. She said she took the role with the hope that she would become well known in America. Throughout the filming of the movie, there were rumours that the experience was not a happy one, owing to a personality clash with Bond actor George Lazenby. The rumours may have arisen from a reporter witnessing her say "I'm having garlic for lunch, George, I hope you are!" before a love scene between the two. However, both Rigg and Lazenby have denied the claims, and both wrote off the garlic comment as a joke.

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 play by Noël Coward. In 1981 she appeared in a Yorkshire Television production of Hedda Gabler in the title role, and as Lady Holiday in the film The Great Muppet Caper (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. She costarred with Denholm Elliot in a television version of Dickens' Bleak House (BBC, 1985), and played the Evil Queen, Snow White's evil stepmother, in the Cannon Movie Tales's 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 1989 BAFTA for Best Television Actress.

In the 1990s she appeared on television as Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca (winning an Emmy Award in the process), 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!, taking over from Vincent Price, her co-star from Theatre of Blood. Her TV career in America has been varied. She starred in her own sitcom Diana in 1973, but it was not successful.

She also appeared in the second series of Ricky Gervais's hit comedy Extras, alongside Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe, and in the 2006 film The Painted Veil.

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 with her daughter and also the first time in her career her roots were accessed to find a Doncaster, Yorkshire, accent.

The same year, Rigg secured 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 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 she again reprised the role in season five, in an expanded role from the books.


Personal life
In the mid-1960s, Rigg lived for eight years with actor/director Philip Saville, causing some degree of scandal in the tabloids when she disclaimed interest in marrying the older, already-married Saville, by saying she had no desire "to be respectable". Her marriage to Menachem Gueffen, an Israeli painter, lasted from 1973 until their divorce in 1976, at which time Saville gave her moral support by phoning every day, while telling the press "when a woman has been in your life a long time, she never really leaves it. I hope to be seeing her often, but I have no plans to marry her."

She was married to Archibald Stirling, a theatrical producer and former officer in the Scots Guards, from 25 March 1982, until they divorced in 1990. The marriage broke up when Stirling had an affair with actress Joely Richardson. With Stirling, Rigg has a daughter, actress Rachael Stirling, who was born in 1977.

Rigg has long been an outspoken critic of feminism, saying in 1969, "Women are in a much stronger position than men."

Rigg is a Patron of International Care & Relief and was for many years the public face of the charity's child sponsorship scheme. She was also Chancellor of the University of Stirling, being succeeded by James Naughtie when her ten-year term of office ended on 31 July 2008. Her position as Chancellor of Stirling was largely ceremonial, requiring Rigg to represent the university at all public events and to oversee the school's twice-a-year graduation ceremonies.

Michael Parkinson, who first interviewed Rigg in 1972, described her as the most desirable woman he ever met, who "radiated a lustrous beauty". A smoker from the age of 18, Rigg was still smoking 20 cigarettes a day in 2009 but in 2011 said she had given up smoking because she "had to".

Rigg received honorary degrees from the University of Stirling in 1988 and the University of Leeds in 1992.


Honours
Rigg was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1988 and a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1994.

In 2014, Rigg received the Will Award, presented by the Shakespeare Theatre Company, along with Stacey Keach and John Hurt.

On 25 October 2015, to mark 50 years of Emma Peel, the BFI (British Film Institute) will screen an episode of The_Avengers_(TV_series) followed by an onstage interview with Diana Rigg about her time on the cult 1960s TV show.

Best films

On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)
(Actress)
The Hospital (1971)
(Actress)

Usually with

David Bradley
David Bradley
(1 films)
Michael Gough
Michael Gough
(4 films)
John Glen
John Glen
(2 films)
Source : Wikidata

Filmography of Diana Rigg (32 films)

Display filmography as list

Actress

Last Night in Soho
Directed by Edgar Wright
Origin USA
Genres Drama, Science fiction, Thriller, Fantasy, Horror
Themes Psychologie
Actors Anya Taylor-Joy, Matthew Smith, Thomasin McKenzie, Diana Rigg, Terence Stamp, Rita Tushingham
Roles Ms. Collins
Rating70% 3.502943.502943.502943.502943.50294
Décrit comme un film d'horreur psychologique se déroulant à Soho, à Londres, et inspiré par "Don't Look Now" et "Repulsion".
Breathe
Breathe (2017)
, 1h57
Directed by Andy Serkis
Origin USA
Genres Drama, Biography, Romance
Themes Medical-themed films, Films about disabilities
Actors Andrew Garfield, Claire Foy, Tom Hollander, Hugh Bonneville, Dean-Charles Chapman, Diana Rigg
Roles Lady Neville
Rating71% 3.5551653.5551653.5551653.5551653.555165
Robin Cavendish , un homme brillant et aventureux, voit sa vie prendre une tournure tragique lorsqu'il se retrouve paralysé par la poliomyélite à l'âge de 28 ans. Il va cependant pouvoir compter sur le soutien indéfectible de sa femme dévouée Diana.
The Painted Veil, 2h6
Directed by John Curran
Origin Chine
Genres Drama, Romance
Themes Medical-themed films, Films about viral outbreaks
Actors Liev Schreiber, Naomi Watts, Diana Rigg, Edward Norton, Toby Jones, Anthony Wong
Roles Mother Superior
Rating73% 3.6987353.6987353.6987353.6987353.698735
On a brief trip back to London, earnest, bookish bacteriologist Walter Fane (Edward Norton) is dazzled by Kitty Garstin (Naomi Watts), a vivacious and vain London socialite. He proposes; she accepts ("only to get as far away from [her] mother as possible"), and the couple honeymoon in Venice. They travel on to Walter's medical post in Shanghai, where he is stationed in a government lab studying infectious diseases. They find themselves ill-suited, with Kitty much more interested in parties and the social life of the British expatriates.
Heidi
Heidi (2005)
, 1h44
Directed by Paul Marcus
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Drama
Themes Films about children, Children's films
Actors Emma Bolger, Max von Sydow, Geraldine Chaplin, Pauline McLynn, Diana Rigg, Oliver Ford Davies
Roles Grandmamma
Rating65% 3.280583.280583.280583.280583.28058
The story is about the titular young girl who goes to stay with her grandfather, only to fall into the hands of an evil woman in Frankfurt.
Charles II: The Power and The Passion, 3h55
Directed by Joe Wright
Genres Drama, Documentary, Historical, Romance
Actors Rufus Sewell, Ian McDiarmid, Rupert Graves, Helen McCrory, Christian Coulson, Shirley Henderson
Roles Queen Henrietta Maria
Rating75% 3.763413.763413.763413.763413.76341
It covers the life of Charles II - beginning just before his Restoration to the throne in 1660. He was deeply traumatized by the execution of his father in 1649, after the former's defeat in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms; it begins, however, with his penurious exile in Antwerp in 1658. The film's emphasis is on his court, and his conflicts with Parliament - essentially the same issues which led to the Civil War between his father and the House of Commons, the politics of whom would succeed him - and his relationships with his family, his mistresses and his illegitimate son James, Duke of Monmouth.
Bond Girls Are Forever, 46minutes
Origin USA
Genres Documentary
Themes Documentary films about business, Documentary films about the film industry, Documentaire sur une personnalité
Actors Maryam d'Abo, Halle Berry, Ursula Andress, Honor Blackman, Luciana Paluzzi, Jill St John
Roles Tracy Di Vicenzo (archive footage)
Rating64% 3.236813.236813.236813.236813.23681
À travers des extraits des films James Bond, et avec la participation de plusieurs anciennes "Bond Girls", le documentaire retrace l'évolution de l'héroïne typique des longs métrages 007, de la demoiselle en détresse à la participante courageuse.
Victoria & Albert
Actors Jonathan Firth, Victoria Hamilton, James Callis, Diana Rigg, Peter Ustinov, Patrick Malahide
Roles Baroness Lehzen
Rating73% 3.691263.691263.691263.691263.69126
Cette télésuite raconte les premières années de vie commune de la reine Victoria du Royaume-Uni et de son époux le prince consort Albert de Saxe-Cobourg-Gotha.
In the Beginning, 3h9
Directed by Kevin Connor
Origin USA
Genres Drama
Themes Films set in Africa, Films about religion, Films based on the Bible, Films about Jews and Judaism
Actors Martin Landau, Jacqueline Bisset, Billy Campbell, Eddie Cibrian, Diana Rigg, Fred Weller
Roles Mature Rebeccah
Rating62% 3.147893.147893.147893.147893.14789
In the Beginning is the story about the travels and travails of the tribe of Abraham (Martin Landau). Set around the year 2000 B.C., the narrative opens with "Genesis 12," wherein the LORD has told Abraham and company to leave their country to a land of milk and honey to be named later. In order to keep up the morale of his followers while on the road, Abraham gives a sermon that sums up God's creation of the universe. By illustrating this sermon with stock footage and special-effects shots, the producers attempt to make a connection between sermons of old and popular entertainments of today. From there, the twists and turns of the Old Testament are treated like a soap opera. Family dramas take center stage, whether it's God testing Abraham by telling him to kill his son in sacrifice, Joseph gaining power in Egypt after being sold to slave traders by his brothers, or one of the many other stories of brothers fighting (Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, etc.). Many events are visualized such as the plagues and the parting of the Red Sea, to name but two.
Parting Shots
Directed by Michael Winner
Genres Comedy, Crime, Romance
Actors Felicity Ann Kendal, John Cleese, Bob Hoskins, Ben Kingsley, Diana Rigg, Joanna Lumley
Roles Lisa
Rating50% 2.5096652.5096652.5096652.5096652.509665
The film concerns Harry Sterndale (Rea), a wedding photographer who is mistakenly told by his doctor that he has six weeks to live and begins to kill people who have wronged him in his life, only to find that the diagnosis was incorrect. Also he paid an assassin named Jamie (Reed) to kill him instead of living out his last days in custody and nearly leaves it too late to call off the hit. Jamie takes after the two and after being arrested for assassinating the dictator of a fictional country he takes the blame for all of the murders that occurred during the film. It ends with Harry and Jill visiting Jamie in prison as newlyweds.
Rebecca (miniseries), 2h58
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Drama, Thriller, Romance
Actors Charles Dance, Emilia Fox, Diana Rigg, Geraldine James, Jean Anderson, Faye Dunaway
Roles Mrs. Danvers
Rating73% 3.6756053.6756053.6756053.6756053.675605
While vacationing in Monte Carlo in 1927, Maxim de Winter meets the young and somewhat naive British companion of Mrs. Van Hopper, a typical Ugly American whose bout of influenza frees the girl – who, as in the original novel, is never identified by name – to spend time with the wealthy widower. When Mrs. Van Hopper announces plans to return to New York City, Max proposes to the girl and brings her to his Cornwall coast estate known as Manderley. There a large household staff is supervised by Mrs. Danvers, who was devoted to Max's first wife Rebecca, the victim of a sailing accident some ten months before, whose battered body was discovered forty miles up the coast and identified by her distraught husband.
A Hazard of Hearts, 1h30
Directed by John Hough
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Drama, Romance
Actors Diana Rigg, Edward Fox, Helena Bonham Carter, Marcus Gilbert, Fiona Fullerton, Christopher Plummer
Roles Lady Harriet Vulcan
Rating68% 3.402613.402613.402613.402613.40261
Compulsive gambler, Sir Giles Staverley, is tricked into gambling away his home by his old adversary Lord Harry Wrotham. As Staverley is distraught and desperate, Wrotham gives him one last chance - he will gamble everything Staverley has lost against Staverley's daughter's hand in marriage and her trust fund of 80,000 guineas. Staverley agrees and loses once again, but unable to face his daughter, Serena, he kills himself. Lord Justin Vulcan, a notoriously cool, clear-headed gambler, challenges Wrotham for the house and the girl and, much to Wrotham's disgust, wins. Justin now finds himself in possession of the house and Serena, but has no idea of what to do with them. After meeting Serena and realising that she is much younger and more attractive than he had imagined, he installs her as a guest at Mandrake, his family home, despite the opposition of Justin's mother, Lady Harriet Vulcan. As Lady Vulcan attempts to marry Serena off to anyone except her son, Serena and Justin become friends and he teaches her about Mandrake, the home he loves. A crisis forces Serena and Justin to confront their feelings for each other.
Samson and Delilah, 2h52
Directed by Nicolas Roeg
Origin USA
Genres Drama, Fantasy, Adventure, Historical, Romance
Themes Films about religion, Films based on the Bible, Films about Jews and Judaism
Actors Dennis Hopper, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Elizabeth Hurley, Debora Caprioglio, Diana Rigg, Michael Gambon
Roles Mara
Rating58% 2.910962.910962.910962.910962.91096
Palestine, 1200 ans avant J-C : Une révolte gronde au sein du peuple hébreu, sous le joug des philistins. Mais aucun homme n'est assez courageux pour devenir leur chef et organiser leur libération. Un jour pourtant, un inconnu apparaît à une femme du nom de Mara et lui annonce : 'Tu mettras au monde un fils. Il sera plus fort que cent hommes et désigné pour lutter contre les philistins. En signe d'obéïssance au Seigneur, il ne faudra jamais lui couper les cheveux'... Plus tard, cet enfant appelé Samson devient célèbre, surtout lorsqu'il tue Mahal, le chef de l'armée philistine. Le Général TARIQ propose alors au Roi un plan pour se débarrasser de Samson. Dalila devra le séduire et découvrir le secret de sa force.
The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders, 1h27
Directed by David Attwood
Origin France
Genres Drama, Comedy, Romance
Actors Alex Kingston, Geoffrey Beevers, Lucy Evans, Neville Phillips, Maureen O'Brien, Daniel Craig
Roles Mrs. Golightly
Rating78% 3.9098953.9098953.9098953.9098953.909895
Ce téléfilm est une adaptation du roman Heurs et Malheurs de la fameuse Moll Flanders écrit par Daniel Defoe en 1722.
Danielle Steel's Zoya, 2h51
Directed by Richard Colla
Origin USA
Genres Drama, Romance
Actors Melissa Gilbert, Bruce Boxleitner, David Warner, Denise Alexander, Don Henderson, Diana Rigg
Roles Evgenia
Rating65% 3.2856553.2856553.2856553.2856553.285655
Zoya, jeune aristocrate Russe, échappe à la chute des Romanov et trouve refuge à Paris avec sa grand-mère. Elles ont tout perdu mais Zoya n'a pas perdu son rêve : devenir ballerine et elle fera tout pour y arriver. C'est aussi à Paris qu'elle va vivre ses premiers émois amoureux quand elle rencontre le séduisant capitaine Clayton Andrews…