Five years after her death, recordings made by Dame Diana Rigg in her final months were published, reigniting Britain’s debate on assisted dying. The actress, who had spent decades speaking her mind on stage and screen, used her last opportunity to call for a change in the law. Rigg, who had terminal lung cancer, dictated her thoughts onto cassette tapes given to her by her son-in-law, Elbow frontman Guy Garvey. In the recordings, she described the indignities of her condition and argued that people should have more control over the end of their own lives.
The tapes were not released until December 2023, when her daughter Rachel Stirling published excerpts in the Observer. Stirling said she had waited three years before she was able to listen to them, but that she had promised her mother the words would be shared. Born Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg on 20 July 1938 in Doncaster, Yorkshire, the actress spent her first eight years in India, where her father worked as a railway engineer. She was raised in Bikaner, spoke Hindi as a second language, and returned to England in 1945 with her mother and older brother, settling in Leeds.
She was sent to Fulneck Girls School, a boarding institution run by the Moravian church, where she said she felt like a fish out of water. It was there she discovered acting, playing Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She credited her bluntness, stubbornness, and dark humor to her Yorkshire upbringing. Rigg won a place at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in the mid-1950s and made her professional debut in 1957 in a touring production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle.
After seasons in regional repertory, she joined Peter Hall’s new Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford in 1959, performing leading classical roles including Cordelia, Viola, and Helena before she was 25. She left the RSC in the mid-1960s, a move Hall opposed. She later said he was dismissive of her decision to join television. In 1965, she was cast as Mrs.
Emma Peel in The Avengers, a role that made her an international star and a feminist icon. Emma Peel was a widow, independently wealthy, and intellectually brilliant, fluent in martial arts and cutting one-liners. The costume that defined the character, a leather catsuit, was something Rigg described as a nightmare to wear. The role inspired self-defense classes for women, and decades later, the Black Widow’s costume in Marvel films was modeled on it.
During her second series, Rigg discovered she was being paid less than the cameraman. She demanded a pay rise, winning £450 a week, but the press labeled her money-grabbing. She later said no woman in the industry came to her defense, and that the fight marked her. In 1969, she was cast as Contessa Teresa Draco in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, becoming the only woman to marry James Bond on screen.
The film is now regarded as one of the franchise’s finest, and Rigg’s character is killed minutes after the wedding. The making of the film was marked by reported tension with co-star George Lazenby. Tabloids claimed Rigg had eaten garlic before their love scenes, a story that she denied in a public letter. The rumor became part of Bond mythology despite her denial.
Through the 1970s and 1980s, Rigg moved between film, television, and the stage. She appeared opposite Vincent Price in Theater of Blood, starred in The Hospital, and made her West End debut in Abelard and Heloise, which required a nude scene that she performed reluctantly. Critic John Simon wrote a cruel review of her body during the Broadway run, describing her as built like a brick basilica with insufficient flying buttresses. In 1982, Rigg published No Turn Unstoned, a collection of bad theatrical reviews that included Simon’s line, a masterclass in having the last word.
Rigg married Israeli painter Menachem Gueffen in 1973. The marriage lasted about a year. She married Scottish theater producer Archibald Stirling in 1982. Their daughter Rachel had been born in 1977.
In 1990, it emerged that Stirling had an affair with actress Joely Richardson. Rigg’s response was widely noted: she donated his collection of bespoke Savile Row suits to a charity shop. The divorce was finalized, and she never married again. In 1991, Rigg took on the title role in Euripides’ Medea at the Almeida Theatre in London, later transferring to Broadway, where she won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play in 1994.
She was 56 at the time. She became a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1994, having earlier been made a CBE in 1988. She won an Emmy in 1997 for her role in Rebecca and continued to work continuously through the following decades. In 2013, at age 74, she was cast as Olenna Tyrell, the Queen of Thorns, in Game of Thrones.
She had never seen the show before taking the role and said she had no idea of its influence. Her performance earned her four Emmy nominations across five seasons. On set, she was both glorious and terrifying, according to those who worked with her. Director Mark Mylod admitted to being afraid of her, and actress Jessica Henwick recalled her storming off the set at very low speed during filming, something that cracked her up.
She described the character of Olenna as “so much up my street. ” The final scene, in which Olenna confesses to poisoning Joffrey before drinking the wine that kills her, was widely praised. Co-creator D. B.
Weiss said she was probably the only character to win her own death scene. In 2018, at 80, she returned to Broadway in My Fair Lady, earning another Tony nomination. She also appeared in Edgar Wright’s psychological horror film Last Night in Soho, filmed in early 2020. Rigg had been a smoker since age 18.
In 2017, she underwent cardiac surgery during which her heart stopped and she nearly died. She quit smoking afterward, but the decades of damage accumulated. In March 2020, she was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. She was given six months to live and moved into her daughter Rachel’s home in London.
She made audio recordings covering her time with the Royal Shakespeare Company, but as her prognosis became certain, her subject shifted. She wanted to talk about dying and about the law, calling for changes to allow people true agency over their own bodies at the end of life. In the tapes, she spoke of the indignities of the illness, including losing control of her bowels, which she called the most dehumanizing thing that can happen. She discussed her options, including the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland, but said it was impossible to end one’s own life without it being barbaric or painfully inefficient.
She died at home on 10 September 2020. Her daughter said she had spent her last months reflecting joyfully on her extraordinary life and that she would miss her beyond words. Her final screen performances were released posthumously: Black Narcissus aired in late 2020, and Last Night in Soho reached cinemas in 2021, dedicated to her memory.