![\"Dame](\"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Dame_Diana_Rigg.jpg\")
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Diana Rigg had never even watched The Avengers when she auditioned for Emma Peel on a whim. Within a year, she was one of the most famous women in the world. Emma Peel was unlike anything British TV had seen \u2014 a spy in a catsuit who fought villains with martial arts and a sharper mind, who treated her male partner as an equal, who was almost always the smartest person in the room. The show became a global phenomenon. Diana became an icon.<\/p>\n
Then she discovered the truth about her pay.<\/p>\n
She was earning \u00a390 a week. The cameraman was earning \u00a3120. She walked into the producers\u2019 office and said, simply, that it was unfair. She did not stamp her foot. She did not shout. She just refused to keep quiet.<\/p>\n
The press called her \u201ca mercenary creature.\u201c Newspapers painted her as greedy, difficult, ungrateful. Not one woman in the industry stood beside her. Her co-star Patrick Macnee, whom she adored her whole life, looked the other way because he wanted a quiet life. She was completely alone.<\/p>\n
She got her raise. Her salary roughly doubled. And then, in 1968, after 51 episodes, she walked away from the most famous role of her generation. She hated the loss of privacy. She hated being called a sex symbol. She had fought a fair fight and stood there, by herself, while the industry tried to shame her for it. She was done.<\/p>\n
She never looked back.<\/p>\n
She returned to the classical theatre that had trained her. She joined James Bond in 1969 as Tracy in On Her Majesty\u2019s Secret Service \u2014 the only woman 007 ever married. She won the 1994 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for Medea on Broadway. Queen Elizabeth made her a Dame the same year.<\/p>\n
And she never, in any interview across any decade, stopped saying exactly what she thought.<\/p>\n
On aging in an industry obsessed with youth, she was honest: \u201cI\u2019m now invisible. I walk down the street and nobody sees me. The attention we get when we\u2019re young and beautiful is not something to be respected.\u201c When journalists asked condescending questions, she gave them looks that could cut glass. She raised her daughter Rachael largely as a single mother. She aged publicly, without surgery, without apology, without performing a younger version of herself for anyone.<\/p>\n
Then, at 74, came Olenna Tyrell.<\/p>\n
Game of Thrones cast her in 2013 as the elderly, acid-tongued grandmother of House Tyrell. The role could have been a few scenes. Diana made Olenna one of the most beloved characters in the entire series. When Olenna was finally poisoned by Cersei Lannister, her last scene \u2014 confessing she had murdered Joffrey and telling Jaime to make sure Cersei knew \u2014 became one of the most celebrated moments in television history.<\/p>\n
She was nearly 79. She was stealing scenes in the biggest show on Earth, playing a woman who got the last word on her own death.<\/p>\n
A whole new generation discovered what fans had known for 50 years: she was incapable of giving a boring performance.<\/p>\n
She once said, \u201cI think being beautiful is overrated. I think being intelligent is beautiful.\u201c She lived that in every role, every interview, every decade.<\/p>\n
Dame Diana Rigg died of lung cancer on 10 September 2020, at her daughter\u2019s home in London. She was 82. Her final film, Last Night in Soho, was completed just before her death.<\/p>\n
The tributes were enormous. What stood out was not just praise for her talent but celebration of her refusal to be managed, diminished, or made comfortable for anyone else\u2019s benefit.<\/p>\n
She was difficult. She was demanding. She was uncompromising. She was 79 years old getting the last word on Cersei Lannister.<\/p>\n
She was exactly herself, from beginning to end.<\/p>\n
They tried to pay her less than the cameraman.<\/p>\n
She had the last word for 52 more years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Diana Rigg had never even watched The Avengers when she auditioned for Emma Peel on a whim. Within a year, she was one of the most famous women in the world. Emma Peel was unlike anything British TV had seen \u2014 a spy in a catsuit who fought villains with martial arts and a sharper … <\/p>\n