Diana Rigg
 Diana Rigg was born July 20, 1938 in Doncaster, Yorkshire. She has one younger brother. When she was two months old, her family moved to Jodhpur, in northwest Indian, where her father, an engineer, became manager of the state railroad. She lived in India until she was eight years old, and was sent back to England to boarding school. She first attended Great Missenden in Buckhinghamshire, and three years later transferred to Fulneck Girl's School in Pudsey, Yorkshire, near Leeds. The rebellious Rigg was not overly fond of Fulneck Girl's School, and Fulneck was probably not overly fond of her. As she recalled in a 1973 interview with TV Guide: "Classes were incredibly boring. I took to dreaming. They took to punishing me. I was always working off punishments for not doing what I was supposed to do." (1) It was at Fulneck, though, that she discovered her interest in acting, through the tutelage of at least one sympathetic teacher, Mrs. Sylvia Greenwood, who helped channel her rebellious nature into an interest in poetry and the stage. Another influence was her grandfather, with whom she visited during school vacations, and who encouraged her interest in T.S. Eliot, Shakespeare and the English lyric poets. After graduating from Fulneck at the age of 17, and after a short-lived engagement, Rigg auditioned for and was accepted at, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1955. She was still a rebel, and even R.A.D.A. was too confining. "[It] was too rarefied. It had nothing to do with real life. As a matter of fact, I very nearly got thrown out of R.A.D.A. because I was having a dose of real life on the outside." (2) Nevertheless, she and R.A.D.A. managed a compromise and she made her professional debut with R.A.D.A. in 1957 as Natella Abashwili in The Caucasian Chalk Circle. She worked in repertory theater over the next two years, acting in walk-on roles to get her Equity card, and working as an assistant stage manager. Later she recalled those days happily. "It was the nicest feeling in the world. It was my first job and I had nowhere to go but up. Of course, I could have stayed at the bottom. But that's inconceivable when you're 19 and full of natural optimism." (5) In 1959, she signed a five-year contract with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford and began to gain recognition. One of her early roles was Helena, in Peter Hall's A Midsummer Night's Dream. She also played Cordelia to Paul Scofield's King Lear. In 1969, she reprised the role in Peter Hall's filmed version of the play, which also starred Helen Mirren, Ian Richardson, and Judi Dench. In 1983, she appeared as Regan in Laurence Olivier's King Lear. At the end of her RSC contract, in late 1964, she auditioned for the role of Emma Peel in The Avengers. She had never seen the program before and went to the audition on a lark, not too tremendously concerned with whether or not she got the role. She and the rest of the actresses called to audition for the role were told to turn up in black polo necks and black slacks, looking like an "army of junior nazis." (6) Her move to television was criticized by many of her contemporaries in the theater as a waste of her talents. Blunt and outspoken, Rigg countered that television was a new challenge for her. In effect, she was a pioneer of a trend that is quite common now, of actors going back and forth between stage and television. Rigg was also outspoken in her (personal) objection to marriage. No matter how much Diana Rigg's character, Emma Peel, personified the new, liberated woman and the evolving feminist movement of the late 60's, Rigg's remarks weren't calculated to the comfort level of conservative, male, television executives. While fans of The Avengers were enthusiastic about Diana Rigg, Diana Rigg was less than happy with The Avengers. She was uncomfortable with the demands of interviews, publicity and photography sessions, and with the overwhelming recognition the series brought her. "It was frightening. I was used to strolling in the street without a second thought. And suddenly everyone was looking at you wherever you went, nudging, winking." (4) As for fan mail, after reading some of the odd letters that the character of Emma Peel generated, she handed the chore of dealing with it over to her mother, who would make sensible replies along the lines of "take a cold shower," or "run around the block." (6) After 12 episodes of The Avengers she discovered that she was paid less than the cameraman. "I made a bit of a stink about it. At the time it was considered very bad form. Any argument about money is ugly but I felt I was being exploited and I had to put a stop to it." (3) At the end of the black and white season, she threatened to leave unless she received a raise. Her paycheck went from £90 a week to £180 a week (3) and changes were made to her shooting schedule to allow her to appear in Statford as Viola in the the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Twelfth Night. But Rigg's problems went beyond money. She also wasn't happy with the way she was treated by ABC television executives. Emma Peel may have been thoroughly emancipated, and the tremendously popular character may have made the series in the United States, but to the ABC executives, Diana Rigg was just another actress. Macnee found out much later that Rigg believed she had only two friends on the set: him, and the driver who took her to the studio every morning. Macnee was also instrumental in keeping Rigg on the set, encouraging her her to remain in the series, to see it through at least its first color season, and its first season on the air in the United States. But, it was a foregone conclusion that at the end of the color season, Rigg would leave the series. For the role of Emma Peel, Diana Rigg received two Emmy Award nominations as Best Actress in a Dramatic Series in 1967 and 1968. After leaving the Avengers, she filmed Peter Hall's A Midsummer Night's Dream, reprising her role of Helena, The Assassination Bureau, and the James Bond film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Although she made the Bond film, Rigg fought against being typecast in Emma Peel-type roles and noted later that she turned down a lot of scripts that had her carrying guns. The plum roles she would have like to have had went, instead, to Glenda Jackson and Vanessa Redgrave. Rigg's films in the 1970's include the highly acclaimed The Hospital (1971) with George C. Scott, Theater of Blood (1973), a wonderfully over-the-top horror film she made with Vincent Price, and the made-for-television movie, In This House of Brede. Rigg also made a fleeting appearance as Portia in the 1970 televised version of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, with Charlton Heston and Jason Robards. In 1973, Rigg starred in her own U.S. comedy series, Diana, which was pulled by the network after 13 episodes. As Diana Smythe, Rigg played a young Englishwoman, a divorced dress designer who moved to New York City. One Diana episode featured former Avengers co-star Patrick Macnee, playing the role of a long-ago flame. Veiled references to the enigmatic Steed/Emma relationship delighted Avengers fans, but the series couldn't overcome the fact that it resembled a watered-down version of the very popular Mary Tyler Moore Show. In his biography, Blind in One Ear, Macnee cites the failure of "Diana" as due to the fact that as Diana Smythe, Rigg was placed in a subservient position of taking orders from others, and the show did not play up Rigg's strengths, a recollection that matches my own memories of this short-lived series. The 1970's also featured Rigg in some of her best stage work, prior to the 1990's. She starred as Dolly in Tom Stoppard's Jumpers, in Abelard and Heloise which earned her a Tony Award nomination, in Macbeth (as Lady Macbeth to Anthony Hopkins' Macbeth) and in The Misanthrope (which earned her a Tony award nomination) and Phaedra Brittanica. Abelard and Heloise once again put Rigg in a tempest-in-a-teapot controversy when she and co-star Keith Mitchell appeared in a brief nude scene on stage. She and Mitchell were the first major actors to appear nude on stage and although critics praised the scene as tastefully done and necessary for the development of the play, the press went into a furor. The critics won. Rigg was named one of the year's best actresses by the London Critics' Circle for her role as Heloise and in 1971, when the play was brought to the United States, she received a Tony nomination for best actress in a dramatic play. In 1973, Rigg married Menahem Gueffen, an Israeli painter. Various accounts paint it as a stormy, difficult relationship. They separated for a time early in the marriage and then divorced in 1976. In 1982, she married Archibald Stirling and they have a daughter, Rachel, now attending university. Rigg and Stirling are divorced. During the 1980's, Rigg made a series of tv films and a Muppet movie for Disney, but her stage career lagged. Although she appeared in the short-lived musical, Collette, in 1981 and, in 1987 in the London revival of Sondheim's Follies, she devoted time to raising her daughter, Rachel, and to her marriage. "If it were said that I didn't fulfill my potential as a mother and a wife I'd be heartbroken," she once said. "But if it were said I hadn't achieved my full potential as an actress, I would understand the reasons why." (3)
Her roles during the 80's seem to have been selected to accomplish two things: to keep her working, and to keep her working in such a way that she wouldn't have a major block of time committed away from her family. Among the many feature films and made-for-tv films she appeared are Agatha Christie's Evil Under the Sun, The Great Muppet Caper, (which greatly impressed her daughter), Mother Love, Witness for the Prosecution, and Ibsen's Little Eyeoff, where she again played opposite Anthony Hopkins. In 1989, upon Vincent Price's retirement, she took over as host of PBS' Mystery.
In the 1990's, Diana Rigg returned to the stage and in the last seven years has played the most difficult and demanding roles of her career. She made her return via the Almeida Theater in Islington (northeast London), which has gained a reputation as an artistic powerhouse, working for Equity minimum of £165 a week. Her string of hits in the 1990's started with Dryden's All for Love, where she played the role of Cleopatra, and continued in 1993 with the spectacular Medea. In 1995/1996, she appeared in Brecht's Mother Courage, and in 1996/1997 in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. She seems to relish roles like Medea and Virginia Woolf, where she can pull out all her emotional stops.
She has also taken character roles in several films: Mother Love, A
Good Man in Africa, Running Delilah, Moll Flanders, and Rebecca.
With the exception of Mother Love and Rebecca, the roles seem to
have been selected to fill in the nooks and crannies of time between
her major roles on stage. Rigg was nominated for an Olivier Award (comparable to the Broadway Tony Awards) in early 1996 for her role in Mother Courage. In late 1996 received the London Evening Standard Drama Award for Best Actress for her roles in Mother Courage and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, the second time in four years she has received the Evening Standard Award. "They do say the profession gets increasingly difficult but my career seems to have been inside out, I'm playing the bigger parts now that I'm older," said Rigg. "That's probably right because I wasn't ready for them before so I'm grateful for them now." She added: "Stage work is very tiring and it eats into your life, so I'd like to do more television and films." (5) Rigg has edited two books: "No Turn Unstoned: The Worst Ever Theatrical Reviews" and "So to the Land," a collection of English country lyric poetry. She is a co-founder and has has served as director of United British Artists. She has received honorary degrees from Stirling University (1988) and Leeds University (1992) for her accomplishments in the theatre and in film. She was decorated a Commander of the British Empire in the late 1980's and, within days of accepting the Tony Award for Medea in 1994, was created a Dame. An avid angler, Rigg is one of a growing number of women in England who are taking fly rods in hand and invading the male bastions of trout and salmon streams. When not acting or angling, she likes to walk in the countryside, to write and to read. Correspondence can be sent to Diana Rigg in the U.K. in care of
London Management and in the United States in care of:
Lionel Larner, Ltd.
References:
The headline photo of Diana Rigg is from Parade Magazine, December 31, 1989, The photo of Rigg at the 1994 Tony Awards is from The London Times. These two images were provided by Kim Metzger. The photograph of Diana Rigg and her daughter following the London Evening Standards Awards is from The London Times.
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