By Matt Schudel—-
Diana Rigg, a classically trained actress who performed in Shakespearean plays before taking on her most renowned role, as a leather-clad private eye on the 1960’s British TV series “The Avengers,” which became a cult hit and earned her the title of the “sexiest TV star of all time,” died Sept. 10 at her home in London. She was 82.
The cause was cancer, her daughter, actress Rachael Stirling, said in a statement.
Ms. Rigg spent years developing her craft as a member of Britain’s Royal Shakespeare Company, and had a long career in the theater, extending almost to the end of her life. She won a Tony Award in 1994 for her powerful role as Medea, avenging her husband’s betrayal in the classic Greek play by Euripides.
But it was her portrayal of another avenger that made her a household name: Emma Peel. Ms. Rigg was the second woman to appear as the sidekick — pun intended — to Patrick Macnee’s gentlemanly John Steed on the stylish and cheeky British television spy series that ran from 1961 to 1969.
Replacing Honor Blackman — who gained fame as the character Pussy Galore in the James Bond film “Goldfinger” — Ms. Rigg went from “King Lear” to something like the queen of leers.
In her debut on “The Avengers” in 1965, Ms. Rigg is in her apartment, with the door marked “Mrs. Emma Peel.” She was clearly a single woman of remarkable independence, sometimes writing scientific papers on thermonuclear physics, but her character’s very name was said to derive from a studio executive’s recommendation that Macnee’s female assistant should have “man appeal” or “M appeal” — thus, “Emma Peel.”
In her debut on “The Avengers,” Ms. Rigg opened her door to admit Macnee’s Steed. She had a fencing foil in her hand, a skintight catsuit over the rest of her and auburn hair flowing to her shoulders. In that moment, much of her character was defined, as an independent who was stylish, powerful, seductive and, most of all, independent.
“The coffee is over there,” she tells Steed in the opening scene.
“There doesn’t seem to be any cream,” he replies.
“The cream,” Ms. Rigg’s character says, “is in the kitchen” as she blocks his way with the point of her sword.
“I could take it black,” he says.
They engage in a duel before Steed can get his coffee.
Patrick Macnee, debonair actor in the TV series ‘The Avengers,’ dies at 93
From 1965 to 1968, Ms. Rigg overshadowed Macnee as the star of “The Avengers,” which came to U.S. television in 1966. She wore berets, bikinis, the mod fashions of London’s Carnaby Street and sometimes cropped tops and other scanty outfits that were hard to describe.
In one episode, she was dubbed the “Queen of Sin” to infiltrate a secret group called the Hellfire Club. According to backstage lore, the knee-high leather boots, spiked collar and tight black corset that Ms. Rigg wore for the role did not come from the studio’s wardrobe department.
The show was pure fluff and fantasy, of course, but every time Steed called on Emma Peel, saying, “Mrs. Peel, we’re needed,” the roles seemed reversed. Ms. Rigg became the tough character who carried a gun and knocked out villains with karate kicks, while the dapper Steed was armed only with his steel-lined bowler hat and an umbrella that concealed a stiletto. She drove a sports car and a motor scooter, with Steed riding behind her.
Something in Ms. Rigg’s look — her direct gaze, the half-smile under prominent cheekbones, her husky voice, her unabashed sexual energy — made her character irresistible to both women and men.
“She exuded the same style, confidence and beauty that were central to the abiding appeal of James Bond,” film scholar Toby Miller, who wrote a book on “The Avengers,” told the New York Times in 1998.AD
Ms. Rigg appeared in 51 episodes of “The Avengers” before leaving the show in 1968. More than 30 years later, a poll of TV Guide readers named Ms. Rigg the “sexiest TV star of all time.” (Her male counterpart was George Clooney.)
“Emma Peel was special in those times,” Ms. Rigg told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1990, “because she seemed unobtainable, she was exciting, she was a new kind of woman who could stand up to a man.”
When she was in “The Avengers,” she received thousands of letters from viewers — many of which were answered by her mother.
“My daughter is much too old for you,” she replied in a form letter, “and what you need is a good run around the block.”
Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg was born July 20, 1938, in the Yorkshire town of Doncaster, England. She moved soon after her birth to India, where her father was a railroad engineer.
She lived in India until she was 8, when she began to attend boarding school in England. She was drawn to acting and the pageantry of the stage from an early age. At 17, she was engaged to be married and also had secured admission to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Her father told her she had to choose one or the other: She chose her art.
In 1959, she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, where she spent five years working with Britain’s leading actors and directors, including Peter Hall and Peter Brook. She quickly advanced from walk-on parts to major Shakespearean roles such as Helena in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Bianca in “The Taming of the Shrew,” Lady Macduff and later Lady Macbeth in “Macbeth,” Adriana in “The Comedy of Errors” and Cordelia in “King Lear.” She toured Europe and the United States with the company.
Later, during her breaks from shooting “The Avengers,” Ms. Rigg continued to appear in classic stage roles. Her film debut came in 1969 with “The Assassination Bureau,” in which she played an Edwardian-era journalist. The same year, she appeared in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” the only James Bond film starring George Lazenby. She played a glamorous woman who marries Bond, only to be killed at the end of the film.AD
In 1970, Ms. Rigg starred in a London stage production of “Abelard and Heloise,” Ronald Millar’s retelling of a classic 12th-century love story. When the show moved to Broadway the next year, critic Clive Barnes wrote in the New York Times that Ms. Rigg was “perfect, as sensuous as a cat, with hidden fires beneath the surface, and a radiant beauty far more beguiling than that of many more obviously pretty women.” She was nominated for a Tony Award for best actress in a dramatic play, but the play was also noteworthy because Ms. Rigg and her co-star, Keith Michell, appeared nude in one scene.
Ms. Rigg later regretted the nude scene, calling it “the most horrible thing I’ve ever done,” and a theatrical brouhaha broke out after acid-penned critic John Simon wrote, “Diana Rigg is built like a brick mausoleum with insufficient flying buttresses.” Ms. Rigg included the comment in a 1982 anthology of savage reviews that she assembled, “No Turn Unstoned.”
One of Ms. Rigg’s most indelible performances came in director Jonathan Kent’s production of Eurpides’s “Medea,” which premiere in London in 1992 and in New York two years later. Ms. Rigg played the title character, who plans a calculated and brutal revenge on her straying husband by killing their children.
“I know what I intend to do is wrong,” Medea says. “But the rage of my heart is stronger than my reason.”
“Dressed for much of the play in blood red, Rigg can command attention by just standing onstage,” journalist Michael Kuchwara wrote for the Associated Press. “Her voice is low, almost husky but with an emotional range that can quickly change from purr to roar . . . Rigg prowls the stage like a caged tigress.”
She won a Tony Award for the role.
“I look back on that show as the happiest time of my professional career,” she told the London Times in 2007, “because it started so modestly and ended up as a sell-out on Broadway.”
From 1989 to 2003, Ms. Rigg was the host of the weekly PBS series “Mystery!,” and in 1994 she became a Dame Commander of the British Empire. She continued her work on the stage, including memorable turns in Bertolt Brecht’s “Mother Courage and Her Children,” Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” and Stephen Sondheim’s “Follies.” She received an Emmy Award in 1997 for her portrayal of Mrs. Danvers in a miniseries of “Rebecca.”
Ms. Rigg’s marriages to artist Menachem Gueffen and businessman Archibald Stirling ended in divorce. Survivors include Rachael Stirling, her daughter from her second marriage; and a grandson.
In recent years, Ms. Rigg lived in France and England and kept busy with theatrical and television roles, including a part as the tart-tongued Lady Olenna Tyrell in the HBO series “Game of Thrones.” Ms. Rigg was almost unrecognizable under her costumes, but her character always seemed to get the last word.
“I wonder if you’re the worst person I ever met,” Lady Olenna says to a longtime rival. “At a certain age, it’s hard to recall.”
You must log in to post a comment.