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Diana Rigg (recording from 1970)
Photo:
- / AFP
There were 52 acts of artistic under-challenge that made her world-famous.
The actress Diana Rigg quit her job as Emma Peel in the series "Mit Schirm, Charme und Melone" in 1967 for exactly this reason after three years and 52 episodes: she feels "artistically underchallenged".
The then 29-year-old actress had started at the theater snobs of the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, knew the acting titan Laurence Olivier from chatting in the canteen and had appeared in venerable classics such as "The Taming of the Shrew" and "King Lear" .
At the time, acting was considered a noble art, while television series was considered dull entertainment.
"It was a shock to me that I was suddenly seen as a sex symbol"
Diana Rigg on her role in "With umbrella, charm and melon"
For her work in "Mit Schirm, Charme und Melone", Rigg was adored by the audience not only for her great acting skills, but also for her phenomenal looks - that didn't make things any better.
"It was a shock to me that I was suddenly seen as a sex symbol," said 80-year-old Rigg in an interview with the Guardian in London.
Her mother answered particularly intrusive fan mail with the same two sentences: "My daughter is far too old for you. Take a cold shower."
The actress Rigg, who has now died at the age of 82, was characterized throughout her life by repartee, wit and a sometimes rough tone.
In her heyday, he made sure that she was celebrated in the theater in the meanest of all Shakespeare roles as Lady Macbeth - and for her appearances as the superbly evil Lady Olenna in "Game of Thrones" he earned her the strange critical praise that she was "too harsh." its own art form ".
Rigg owes her fame at a young age, of course, to the role of agent Emma Peel in "The Avengers", as "With umbrella, charm and bowler hat" was called in the British original.
At the side of the aristocratic agent John Steed, who was always stiff at the waist, and whom Patrick Macnee had initially played with other fellow campaigners, Riggs Peel was a proud karate fighter in super-tight combat clothing and jumpsuits.
She had a mocking tongue and a wittily analyzing every villainy.
Peel and Steed, obviously also interested in each other erotically, competed in often surreal missions against murderous robots and atomic bomb makers.
When the gnarled Steed "Mrs. Peel, we're needed!"
shouted, it was against bad guys who had a time machine and bastards who had lived somewhere in a big hole underground for years.
The funny, crazy scripts also played their part in the fact that "With umbrella, charm and bowler hat" is adored as a psychedelic masterpiece in many countries around the world - and they are partly to blame for the fact that the actress Diana Rigg's Emma Peel was intoxicated as a superhero , swinging London of the sixties is considered.
"I had a comfortable life. Now I have to stand around on red carpets again"
Diana Rigg on her role in "Game of Thrones"
In the 1969 James Bond film "On Her Majesty's Secret Service", Rigg played alongside the marginally underrated Bond actor George Lazenby as the only woman the eponymous hero was ever allowed to marry in one of Agent 007's movie adventures.
Of course, Riggs' engagement at Bond's side was an ironic reflection of her Emma Peel role, in which she had sat down confidently over the macho airs of the secret service world.
She also turned against male power beyond the screen.
As early as the 1960s, Rigg was publicly outraged that her male teammates and even the cameramen received higher fees than she did - from today's perspective that makes her a champion for the cause of women, but it brought her a lot of trouble.
"I just can't help but always express my opinion clearly," she recalled in interviews from that time.
"Back then, the press poisoned me as a greedy creature. And not a single woman from the entire film business supported me."
Rigg had spent part of her childhood in India, where her father had an important job as a railroad worker.
She was married twice, in the 1970s to the painter Menachem Gueffen, an Israeli, and in the 1980s to Archibald Stirling, a large Scottish landowner.
Rigg achieved triumphs in the theater and once also a minor scandal because of a nude appearance.
She became an acting professor and was elected to the board of directors of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
After many other awards, she was appointed Dame Commander by Queen Elizabeth II in 1994.
Dame Diana mockingly called her late fame as a "Game of Thrones" figure a heavy burden: "I had a very comfortable life. Now I have to constantly stand around on red carpets and be bored there again."
Rigg claimed that their courage and cheek were innate and therefore genetic.
"At least I always use that as an excuse."
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