Dame Diana’s £3.3m will... with £5k for her beautician
THE Avengers star Diana Rigg left her actress daughter around £3million in her will...and £5,000 to a beautician from her local nail salon.
Dame Diana Rigg found fame in the 1960s and 1970s playing sultry roles, including leather-clad Emma Peel in The Avengers and James Bond’s wife in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
She also starred as ruthless matriarch Lady Olenna Tyrell in HBO’s Game Of Thrones blockbuster.
In a will signed days before she died from cancer in September 2020 aged 82, Dame Diana bequeathed the bulk of her fortune in a trust to 44-year-old Rachael Stirling, her daughter by second husband Archibald Stirling – a theatre director and former Scots Guard. Ms Stirling has herself starred on stage and screen, including in Detectorists, Tipping The Velvet and Doctor Who.
Dame Diana’s estate was worth £3,368,886 and includes property in France and America.
She also gave £280,500 to relatives and charities, including £50,000 to Great Ormond Street Hospital and the St Christopher’s Hospice in south-east London, and £20,000 to the Earls Court Youth Club.
Other bequests include an enigmatic £5,000 to “Jessica of the Nail Gallery at 300 Fulham Road, London”, close to Rigg’s home in Cornwall Gardens.
A dining society set up by Winston Churchill in 1911, which meets at the Savoy Hotel, was left £500.
She asked for it be used “to provide wine at the next gathering after my death and for me to be acknowledged in the menu but not toasted”.
Dame Diana trained with the Royal Shakespeare Company and won BAFTA, Emmy and Tony awards in a career spanning more than 60 years.
She was the only woman to marry James Bond in the 007 movies, playing his ill-fated wife Teresa di Vicenzo opposite George Lazenby in 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.