RIP, Diana Rigg

… Well, hell.

Diana Rigg Dies: ‘Games Of Thrones’, ‘The Avengers’ & Bond Actress Was 82

By Tom Grater
September 10, 2020 6:35am

English actress Diana Rigg has died at the age of 82, her representatives have confirmed.

A celebrated and award-winning performer on stage and screen, Rigg was known for her TV roles in The Avengers and Games Of Thrones, and in film as Tracy Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Her theater work included a 1992 production of Greek tragedy Medea, for which she won a Tony in the title role, and a 1987 staging of Stephen Sondheim’s musical Follies.

“Diana Rigg died peacefully early this morning. She was at home with her family who have asked for privacy at this difficult time. Diana was a much loved and admired member of her profession, a force of nature who loved her work and her fellow actors. She will be greatly missed,” her agent Simon Beresford said….

Diana Rigg, Avengers and Game of Thrones star, dies aged 82 (theguardian.com)

The actor Diana Rigg, known for her roles on stage and in film and television – including The Avengers and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service – has died at the age of 82.

Rigg, who rose to prominence in the 1960s through her starring role as Emma Peel in The Avengers alongside Patrick Macnee, enjoyed a long and varied career, playing Lady Olenna Tyrell in HBO’s smash hit Game of Thrones, a show she admitted in 2019 that she had never watched. She also played Countess Teresa di Vicenzo, or Tracy Bond, James Bond’s first and only wife to date, in the 1969 film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service….

[…] To many, however, she is best known as Emma Peel in The Avengers, having appeared in 51 episodes of the hit spy series between 1965 and 1968. In a 2019 interview with the Guardian, she said that becoming a sex symbol overnight had shocked her, adding that she “didn’t know how to handle it”, and kept unopened fan mail in the boot of her car “because I didn’t know how to respond and thought it was rude to throw it away. Then my mother became my secretary and replied to the really inappropriate ones saying: ‘My daughter’s far too old for you. Go take a cold shower!’”

After finding out that she was being paid less than the cameraman on the series, Rigg fought for greater pay, saying in 2019: “I was painted as this mercenary creature by the press [for fighting against the pay disparity on the series] when all I wanted was equality. It’s so depressing that we are still talking about the gender pay gap.”…