Photo: NBC Television / Public domain (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
Few performers have aged into greatness the way Diana Rigg did. She could have coasted forever on Emma Peel, the rare sixties icon who was genuinely cool rather than merely decorative, but she kept raising the stakes: a Tony for Medea, a damehood, and then, in her seventies, the deliciously acid Olenna Tyrell, stealing Game of Thrones from actors fifty years her junior. What I admire most is her refusal to be sentimental about any of it; she treated glamour as a tool, not an identity. When she died in 2020, British acting lost its sharpest tongue and one of its most disciplined craftsmen.
Overview
Dame 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.
Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- Diana Rigg
- Name (Japanese)
- ダイアナ・リグ
- Reading
- だいあな・りぐ
- Born
- July 20, 1938 – September 10, 2020
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Cancer / Tiger
- Origin
- Doncaster, United Kingdom
- Blood type
- Private
- Height
- Private
- Agency
- Private
- Occupation
- television actor / film actor / university teacher / stage actor / actor
2. Background
- Elementary school
- Private
- Junior high
- Private
- High school
- Private
- University
- Private
Awards & achievements
- 1994 Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire
- 1994 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play
- 1988 Commander of the Order of the British Empire
- 1997 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie
- 1992 Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Actress
- 1996 Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Actress
3. Relationships
- Spouse
- Private
- Children
- Private
- Parents
- Private
- Siblings
- Private
4. Personality
Motto
Private
6. Links
Television actor — see all → · Film actor — see all → · More people from United Kingdom →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-11
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public items are marked "Private / Unknown". English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.