Underrated Performer of the Month: Diana Rigg

Every time I mention Diana Rigg in a blog post, she generates a plethora of positive comments. So, for all we Dame Diana fans, I wanted to pay a brief tribute to one of the most versatile and reliable actresses of her generation—both in the cinema and on the stage.

After guest stints in a handful of TV shows, Diana Rigg secured lasting fame as Mrs. Emma Peel (the name a play on “man appeal’”) in the classic British series The Avengers. I’m convinced that if she had done nothing else, there would still be plenty of Diana Rigg fan clubs around the world. (And if you think the role was easy, watch Uma Thurman struggle with it in the 1998 big screen adaptation of The Avengers).

Regarding her famous first-season costume, she once said: “The leather catsuit I wore in The Avengers was a total nightmare. It took a good 45 minutes to get unzipped to go to the loo. It was like struggling in and out of a wet-suit….I got a lot of very odd fan mail while I was in that show, but my mum used to enjoy replying to it. Some of the men who wrote to me must have been a bit startled because she would offer really motherly advice. I would get a letter from a teenage boy, say, who was overexcited and my mother would write back saying: ‘My daughter is far too old for you and what you really need is a good run around the block.’ "

Her post-Avengers film career included the tongue-in-cheek The Assassination Bureau (with Oliver Reed), the witty theatrical satire Theater of Blood (she plays Vincent Price’s daughter), and a portrayal as the only Mrs. James Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Agent (in spite of George Lazenby, this is one of my favorite 007 films). Concurrently, she gained acclaim on the stage, earning Tony nominations for Best Actress in 1972 and 1975 (she would eventually win a Tony in 1994 for Medea).

For the rest of her acting career, she moved back and forth among the theatre, the big screen, and the small screen. She earned kudos for dramatic parts in the TV miniseries In the House of Brede, Bleak House, and Rebecca (as Mrs. Danvers). She showed off her singing voice in the 1977 film version of Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music (my wife and I were in London when she did Sondheim’s Follies on stage, but a ticket was not to be found). In 1982, she expertly pulled off the Marlene Dietrich role in an entertaining TV version of Witness for the Prosecution and brought sparkle to the part of a murder suspect opposite Peter Ustinov’s Hercule Poirot in Evil Under the Sun.

The only significant blight on her stellar resume is the ill-advised 1973 American sitcom Diana, in which she played a divorcee living in New York. She has much more success with her other U.S. TV series gig—hosting PBS’s Mystery! from 1989 to 2003.

At age 71, she continues to act, most recently appearing as a nun (as she did in House of Brede) in the 2006 version of The Painted Veil.

So, Dame Diana fans, it’s your time to chime in!