Her full name is Inid Diana Elizabeth Rigg. She was born on 20 July 1938 in Doncaster, Yorkshire. Two months after her birth, the family moved to Jodpur, Rajputan, India, where her father, a railway engineer by profession, held an important position in the management of local railway services. When she turned seven, the family returned to Yorkshire, where she graduated from a private women's school. In 1955, she entered the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and two years later made her debut in the graduation play based on Bertolt Brecht’s play “The Caucasian Cretaceous Circle” as Natella Abashvili. After graduating from the Academy, Diana briefly played in the repertory theater in Chesterfield, worked as a model, and in 1959 signed a five-year contract with the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.
For several years she got relatively small roles, but already in 1962 she played Elena in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Cordelia in King Lear. After the contract with the theater expired, she passed the casting for participation in the television series “the Avengers” and was approved for one of the main roles. The role of graceful, cold-blooded Emma Peel, helping secret agent John Steed (actor Patrick McNee) fight enemies, made Diane Rigg a star and one of the most recognizable faces of British pop culture of the sixties. She played in The Avengers from 1965 to 1967, during which time she was nominated twice for the American Emmy Awards. Meanwhile, in 1966, the actress returned to the stage, again joining the troupe of the Shakespeare Royal Theatre. She soon embodied one of her theatrical roles on the screen, playing Elena in the film version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (1968, dir. Peter Hall).
The success of "The Avengers" opened the way for Diana to the big screen: she played Sonia Winter in the adaptation of Jack London's novel "The Assassin's Bureau" (1969, dir. Basil Darden), another lover of James Bond Tracy (the only one who managed to marry a famous superagent!) in the action movie "Najeli", "Stuart", "Stuart", "Stuart" (1970) in the action film "Stuart of St. In 1971, she made her Broadway debut in Abelard and Eloise and was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actress. In the United States, Rigg briefly starred in the comedy television series Diana (1973, Leonard Stern). She also starred in the black comedy “Hospital” (1971, directed by Arthur Miller) and a very unusual British film “Theater of Blood” (1974, dir. Douglas Hickox) with the famous Vincent Price, parodying both horror films and crime dramas.
In July 1973, she married the Israeli artist Menachem Geffen, but their marriage was fragile and three years later the couple broke up. The role of the nun Phillipa Talbot in the television film “House at Breed Abbey” (1975, Director George Schaefer) earned her an Emmy nomination, but in the second half of the seventies the actress mainly worked on the theater stage. One of her major achievements of this time was the role of Selimena in the Broadway production of Moliere's comedy Misanthrope (1975). After the divorce from Geffen, Diana’s new life partner was theater producer Archibald Stirling. In 1977, she gave birth to a daughter Rachel, and five years later Rigg and Stirling were officially married in New York.
In the eighties, the actress starred in a number of films, including the film adaptation of Agatha Christie's novel "Evil under the Sun" (1982, dir. Guy Hamilton), played Regan in the television production "King Lear" (1983, directed by Michael Elliott) with the participation of Laurence Olivier, Lady Harriet in "A hair from death" (1987, dir. John Hugh) based on the novel "Barglady" (1989) by the British Academy of television "Love of Carlady Carlaine" (1989). She opened the audience another facet of her acting talent, playing in the theatrical musical of Stephen Sondheim “Madness” (1987), in which she performed the vocal parts of one of the main characters, Phyllis Stone. In 1994, Diana Rigg again conquered Broadway, appearing before the audience as Medea in the tragedy of the same name Euripides. Medea brought her the American Tony Award, and in her homeland she was awarded the title of nobility for her many years of contribution to theatrical art. In a long list of theatrical roles of the actress also appears Anna Firling in “Mother Courage”, Martha in “Who is afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, Agrippina in “Britannica” and Phaedra.
In the future, she starred in such films as “The Good Man in Africa” (1994, directed by Bruce Beresford) and “Fatalm Shots” (1998, dir. Michael Winner), but from the mid-nineties she could be seen mainly in television dramas: “Zoe, Richard” (1995), “Joya Rage”, “Joya Rage” (2001), “Joya Rage” (Joj). One of Rigg's most memorable acting roles was as the evil housekeeper Mrs. Danvers in the television version of Daphne Du Maurier's novel Rebecca (1997, dir. Jim O'Breen), for which she won an Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actress. From 1989 to 2003, she hosted a program on the Public Broadcasting Service, "Mystery!", presenting detective series to viewers, replacing Vincent Price. The daughter of Diana from her second marriage, Rachel Stirling, followed in the footsteps of her mother, choosing an acting career.
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