LIFE OF A STAR...
ENID Diana Elizabeth Rigg was born in Doncaster on July 20, 1938.
She trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1959.
The actress quickly made her mark there with important roles in productions of The Taming Of The Shrew, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth and King Lear.
She was hugely successful in her role as Emma Peel, the secret service agent in The Avengers, co-starring Patrick Macnee.
But Dame Diana was unhappy about the intrusion into privacy that came with being on TV, and she was also critical of the way she was treated by TV bosses.
She also discovered that she was being paid less than a cameraman.
“It was very, very intrusive in those days, because I was instantly recognisable,” the actress later told Variety.
“I was grateful to be a success, but there was a price to pay.”
In 1969, she played Bond girl Tracy in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, opposite Bond actor George Lazenby, with whom she had a difficult relationship.
It was in the 1970s that she joined the National Theatre, where she played major roles in Tom Stoppard’s Jumpers, The Misanthrope, Pygmalion, Antony And Cleopatra and Stephen Sondheim’s Follies.
In a nude scene she played in Abelard And Heloise, she was described by one critic as being “built like a brick mausoleum with insufficient flying buttresses”.
As a result, she produced a book of the worstever theatrical reviews, entitled No Turn Unstoned. It was a best-seller.
Dame Diana’s many film credits included The Hospital, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, A Little Night Music, Evil Under The Sun and A Good Man In Africa.
In 1994, she won a Tony Award for her Broadway performance in the title role of Medea.
And in 2008, as she approached 70, she was appearing in The Cherry Orchard at the Chichester Festival Theatre.
Her many TV credits included roles in Hedda Gabler, Witness For The Prosecution, Bleak House and Mother Love. It was her superb portrayal in that BBC production of an obsessive mother who was prepared to do anything, even commit murder, to keep control of her son, which won her the 1990 Bafta for best actress.
Dame Diana was married to the Israeli painter Menachem Gueffen from 1973-76, and was later married to Archibald Stirling, a theatrical producer and former officer in the Scots Guards. They had a daughter, the actress Rachael Stirling.
In 2015, Dame Diana told Radio Times: “A black Bond would be lovely. I wouldn’t like to see a female Bond, because we wouldn’t want to lose the Bond girls. But we could have a lesbian Bond.”