Diana Rigg

Overview

Born
July 20, 1938 · Doncaster, South Yorkshire, England, UK
Died
September 10, 2020 · London, England, UK (lung cancer)
Birth name
Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg
Height
5′ 8½″ (1.74 m)

Biography

Family

Spouses
Children
Parents

Trademarks

Deep husky yet smooth voice

Trivia

She was voted the sexiest-ever television star by TV Guide in the United States.
Born in Yorkshire, the daughter of a railroad engineer, she moved with her family to India at the age of two months and resided there until she was 8 (she learned to speak Hindi).
A smoker from the age of 18, Rigg was still smoking 20 cigarettes a day in 2009. By December 2017, she had stopped smoking after serious illness led to heart surgery, a cardiac ablation, two months earlier. A devout Christian, she commented that: "My heart had stopped ticking during the procedure, so I was up there and The Good Lord must have said, 'Send the old bag down again, I'm not having her yet!'".
More properly known as Dame Diana Rigg, the female equivalent of the title "Sir" when knighted. In June 1994, she was made DBE (Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire) by Queen Elizabeth II for her long contributions to theater and film.
October 20, 2003 - British courts awarded her $63,832 and $134,000 in court expenses in her libel suit against Britain's "Evening Standard" and "Daily Mail" newspapers. They had written that she was an embittered woman who held British men in low regard.

Quotes

[on hitting middle age] I am devastated at what has happened. I have completely disappeared. I am totally invisible. I never really liked my sexy label but on the other hand, to disappear so totally is quite startling.
I don't go without make-up, though. I rather like that transformation in the morning from "I don't want to look in the mirror"; then you start pulling yourself together. It's a rather nice present to yourself that you can still do that.
I had an eye job in my early forties. Someone took a photograph of me in a play, after I'd lost a lot of weight, and I did look like Miss Havisham. I thought, "I have to do something - I'm too young to look like this." So I went and had an eyelift once the play was finished, and the doctor said that it would last only about eight years. I imagined after that it would all cave in with a terrible groaning sound, like scaffolding, but it didn't, and I haven't had anything done since. I look at women who are my age who look absolutely ravishing and I know they have had something done. Well, why not?
If I meet a woman who is immaculately groomed, I really admire her discipline. I grew up admiring out-of-this-world screen goddesses, such as Ava Gardner and Rita Hayworth, but I have to acknowledge that I haven't the patience for getting dressed up very often - at my age you think: "Why bother?". Now that I'm older, I don't go to premieres or first-night parties, not even my own.
I didn't like my Bond Girl outfits. The designer was a friend of the directors and I thought they were too boring and middle-aged for my character. The right costumes are essential for getting into a part; I've witnessed many costume parades with grumpy or even weeping actors because they've been put into the wrong thing.