Diana Rigg
Actor

Diana Rigg

Diana Rigg

Date of birth
Date of death
Age at death
82
Place of birth
Doncaster, Yorkshire, England, UK
Citizenship
United Kingdom
Occupations
television actor, film actor, university teacher, stage actor, actor
Languages
English, French

Biography

Dame Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg DBE (July 20, 1938 – September 10, 2020) was an English actress. She played Emma Peel in the TV series The Avengers (1965-1968) and Olenna Tyrell in Game of Thrones (2013-2017). She has also had a career in theatre, including playing the title role in Medea, both in London and New York, for which she won the 1994 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. She was made a CBE in 1988 and a Dame in 1994 for services to drama.

Rigg made her professional stage debut in 1957 in The Caucasian Chalk Circle, and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1959. She made her Broadway debut in the 1971 production of Abelard & Heloise. Her film roles include Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1968); Countess Teresa di Vicenzo, wife of James Bond, in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969); Lady Holiday in The Great Muppet Caper (1981); and Arlena Marshall in Evil Under the Sun (1982). She won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for the BBC miniseries Mother Love (1989), and an Emmy Award for her role as Mrs. Danvers in an adaptation of Rebecca (1997). Her other television credits include You, Me and the Apocalypse (2015), Detectorists (2015), and the Doctor Who episode "The Crimson Horror" (2013) with her daughter, Rachael Stirling.

Description above from the Wikipedia article Diana Rigg, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Education

  • Royal Academy of Dramatic Art –1957
  • Fulneck School

Awards

  • Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire1994
  • Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play1994
  • Commander of the Order of the British Empire1988
  • Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie1997 Rebecca
  • Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Actress1992 Medea
  • Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Actress1996 Mother Courage; Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf

Nominations

  • Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play1971
  • Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play1975

Education and awards: Wikidata information may be incomplete. Wikidata · Updated: 2026-10-28

Photos

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Filmography

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