I fell in love with Diana Rigg on March 28, 1966. That’s when I watched the first episode of The Avengers broadcast on the ABC Network…and it was love at first sight!
“The show was sold to the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) in 1965, and The Avengers became one of the first British series to be aired on prime-time US television. The US ABC network paid the then-unheard-of sum of $2 million for the first 26 episodes. The average budget for each episode was reportedly £56,000, which was high for the British industry. The fourth series aired in the US from March to the beginning of September 1966.”
Diana Rigg is best known for her iconic role as secret agent Mrs. Emma Peel. But you might remember she also starred in a James Bond movie. Diana Rigg played Countess Teresa “Tracy” di Vicenzo in the 1969 James Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. She remains the only woman to have officially married James Bond in the franchise’s history.
Diana Rigg also performed in The Royal Shakespeare Company and won an Emmy for her role of sharp-tongued matriarch Olenna Tyrell in HBO’s Game of Thrones (2013-2019).
Pilato’s biography includes wonderful photos of Diana Rigg and takes the reader from her early days to her death in 2020 at the age of 82. Are you a fan of Diana Rigg? GRADE: B+
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Foreword by Rupert Macnee — xi
Introduction by Ray Austin — xiii
Preface — xix
PART ONE: BEFORE
Chapter 1: Rigged — 3
Chapter 2: First signs of royalty — 8
Chapter 3: Great expectations — 17
PART TWO: DURING
Chapter 4: Embracing Emma — 31
Chapter 5: Avenging angel — 36
Chapter 6: Defending Mrs. Peel — 43
PART THREE: AFTER
Chapter 7: From the Bureau to Bond — 63
Chapter 8: Hailing Caesar, the Hospital, and Blood — 75
Chapter 9: When Diana met Diana — 84
Chapter 10: Her craft, unstoned — 96
Chapter 11: A little night music with a three-piece suite, and more — 106
Chapter 12: The Bradley Bunch — 121
PART FOUR: FOREVER AFTER
Chapter 13: The queen of Thrones and Thornes — 141
Chapter 14: Final bows — 152
Chapter 15: Encore — 158
Appendix: Life and career highlights: a selective timeline — 173
Acknowledgments — 187
Notes — 189
Bibliography — 197
Index — 203
Silly George! Anyone who breaths air is a fan of Diana Rigg; it’s part of the human contract.
Jerry, I’m glad we all have a fondness for Dame Diana Rigg!
Duh. Yes, of course I’m a fan.
We saw her (including a nude scene!) on March 20,1971 in ABELARD AND HELOISE on Broadway. I remember John Simon making a critical comment implying that her breasts weren’t big enough! On July 9, 1974 we saw her in PYGMALION in London opposite Alec McCowen. On August 5, 1987 we saw her in the revival of Sondheim’s FOLLIES in London. Lastly, we saw her on September 16, 2018 in her final stage role, as Henry Higgins’s mother in MY FAIR LADY at Lincoln Center.
Not that I’m keeping track or anything.
Jeff, you’ve seen more of Diana Rigg than the rest of have! And I don’t just mean the nude scene!
Jackie reminded me of something I’d forgotten. When we went to see FOLLIES we had aisle seats in the orchestra (stalls in London) and were there early. A woman with a broken leg in a cast with crutches had seats in the middle (unlike most Broadway theaters there was no center aisle, just seats straight across), so Jackie “graciously ” (it actually was gracious) offered to switch seats with her so she could sit on the aisle. We ended up dead center in great seats. If you’d asked me, in my mind I remembered the show being JERSEY BOYS but Jackie assures me it was FOLLIES.
Jeff, Jackie certainly was…and is, gracious!
Rigg was the only celebrity I had a crush on that was so strong it rivaled that of some of the real women in my life. I even had a photo of her on the wall for a few years. She wasn’t just my ideal of the most beautiful woman in the world she had that rarest kind of screen presence and was highly intelligent yet from all accounts down to earth which made her all the more alluring.
While Rigg was instantly iconic in “The Avengers” none of her films that I’ve seen did her justice. She was criminally underused in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” while nonetheless being one of the movie’s saving graces. Remember her NBC sitcom from the early seventies? Few people do with good reason.
Rigg wrote a short breezy memoir of her own some years back. It’s a quick, fun read.
Byron, I too believe Diana Rigg’s talents were under utilized and under appreciated over her long career. She was smart, talented, and–as you say–beautiful!
Rigg’s daughter, Rachel Sterling, is also an actress, and she looks (and sounds) very much like her mother. She crops up a lot on British mystery shows. We’ve seen her in a Poirot, a Lewis, and a recent Midsomer Murders.
Rachel Stirling ( note spelling) was also in BLETCHLEY CIRCLE and an episode of THE CHELSEA DETECTIVE.
Deb, I’ll have to keep a lookout for Rachel Sterling! Rachel Stirling appeared in one episode of Doctor Who–“The Crimson Horror”–co-starring with her mother, Diana Rigg.
I remember watching it on Friday night and fell asleep every time. Nothing against the show, just the end of a long week.
Patti, we DVR about 80% of the TV shows we want to watch. Like you we tire easily at night so we’re not up late. Plus, the many, many commercials eat up a lot of time if you don’t Fast Forward through them.
I rarely watch anything at home broadcast live. I record everything that has commercials or pledge drives and fast forward through all the ads etc
I enjoyed everything I saw Ms Rigg in
Maggie, I enjoyed everything I saw Diane Rigg in, too!
Well, Rigg was a great talent, presence and persona throughout her career, and I haven’t heard/read/seen much of anything that suggests that she was anything but an intelligent and gracious person. My father’s key media crushes throughout his life ran to Rigg and Mary Tyler Moore, with an earlier contender in Mitzi Gaynnor who never quite faded, but was less in the public eye in later decades. I could see where he was coming from, even if Moore seemed a bit starved in a way that Rigg didn’t, as the latter seemed usually healthy if slender, and Moore perhaps a bit more brittle a persona.
ABC definitely needed to try harder in the ’60s, till they learned to trend stupid and make some bank in the ’70s.
Todd, ABC has had its ups and downs over the decades. In the 1970s, it had several hit shows like Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, and Charlie’s Angels.
ABC was the clear ratings leader among the US networks in he latter ’70s, for the first time. CBS had dominated US TV for decades, with NBC a solid second place. Dumbed-down programminng you cite (particularly after HAPPY DAYS stopped being about Richie Cunningham and his friends to a more cartoonish Fonzie Show, and spun off LAVERNE & SHIRLEY) put ABC solidly in first place, while NBC floundered.
Oddly, I was reading a short bio of Rigg on Facebook yesterday! In addition to being a world-class beauty, she was a bit of a rebel and bumped heads with producers and directors over her long career!
Bob, Diana Rigg fought to be paid like the male actors she worked with!
They said MacNee (Steed) got 12 times her salary!
Bob, Pilato writes that on THE AVENGERS, the camera man initially made more money than Diana Rigg! Rigg never made as much as MacNee, but she did argue her way into a raise.
Probably made it easier to walk away from the series.
Gaynor!
i’m a sloppy typist of late…