A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE
Dame Diana Rigg is the doyenne of amused gravitas, a tough, imperiously stylish, post-imperial stateswoman of stage and screen. Like Julie Christie, the subject of The Rake’s previous Cherchez La Femme column, she had a traditional English education while her parents were based in India. Born in Doncaster in 1938, Rigg overcame the disorientation of her Yorkshire boarding school to get into RADA and then the Royal Shakespeare Company, where she played Cordelia to Paul Scofield’s Lear.
Before too long she was spotted for the role of Emma Peel in, the English sixties television series that meshed action, fashion and surrealism — Bond as if directed by Magritte. Rigg’s brilliance in the show, especially her deftness for comedy, became a mixed blessing. For a while, the sex kitten persona was as hard to shake off as Peel’s leather cat suit (a “total nightmare” that took 45 minutes to unzip), and the actress protested against the injustice that she was paid less than the cameraman. But her versatility quickly transcended her looks. In 1969 she brought warmth and pathos to the role of Mrs. Bond opposite George Lazenby in , maligned at the time but since reappraised (the director Christopher Nolan, for example, cites it as his favourite Bond and a strong influence on ).
