Dame Diana Rigg's daughter, actress Rachael Stirling, has revealed new details of her mother's final days in a memoir describing how the James Bond and Game of Thrones star kept drinking Campari almost until she died. Rigg died aged 82 in 2020 after a short battle with cancer.
After her condition worsened following treatment, Rigg moved in with Rachael and her husband, Elbow frontman Guy Garvey, to be cared for. Rachael writes in the book, titled All About My Mother, that their 'clinkie drinkies were a non-negotiable' during the period Rigg lived with her full-time while undergoing chemotherapy.
In an extract published in the Sunday Times magazine, Rachael describes the daily ritual: 'A Campari and soda with a generous squeeze of lime and lots of ice, hence the clink in the drink, following a post-lunch nap. I don't think we missed a single Campari o'clock all through her cancer.' The drink continued until the end, when Rigg stopped eating solid food and was sustained by yogurt drinks and liquids, including the Italian aperitif.
Rigg's final days and death
As her health declined further, Rigg was given doses of morphine to ease her pain, and received afternoon visits from friends and family who wanted to say goodbye. Rachael writes that her mother grew impatient with how long the process was taking, telling her after a couple of days on the drugs: 'It's gone on too long. Make today my last day. Push me over the edge.'
Rachael said: 'I had promised to put a pillow over her face if she needed me to but I was unable to do it now. Guy read her Robert Frost. We looked at her lovingly, "It's no use. I've got no words of wisdom to impart," she whispered, and then she slept.' Rigg woke the next morning and exclaimed weakly, 'Oh, another day!'
Rigg's agent, Simon Beresford, confirmed at the time that she had died 'peacefully' and was 'at home with her family who have asked for privacy at this difficult time.'
Tributes to a 'force of nature'
Tributes described Rigg as a 'flinty, fearless, fabulous force of nature.' Jonathan Kent, who directed her in a production of Medea, said her 'combination of force of personality, beauty, courage and sheer emotional power made her a great classical actress, one of an astonishing generation of British stage performers.'
Bond producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli said they were 'very sad to hear of the passing of Dame Diana Rigg, the legendary stage and screen actress who was much beloved by Bond fans.' Game of Thrones paid tribute on the show's official Twitter account, writing: 'Be a dragon. The realm will always remember Diana Rigg.' Macmillan Cancer Support thanked her 'for her years of enduring support' and passed on condolences to Rachael and the family.
A career from the RSC to Game of Thrones
Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg was born in Doncaster on July 20, 1938. She trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1959, and made her name in the 1961 cult TV series The Avengers, playing Emma Peel from 1965 to 1968.
She went on to win Bafta, Emmy and Tony awards and starred as the cutthroat matriarch Lady Olenna Tyrell in HBO's Game of Thrones, a show she admitted in 2019 she had never watched. She also played the Duchess of Buccleuch, Queen Victoria's Mistress of the Robes, in ITV's Victoria alongside Jenna Coleman, and the eccentric Mrs Pumphrey in All Creatures Great and Small.
Rigg earned worldwide acclaim as Bond girl Tracy di Vicenzo in On Her Majesty's Secret Service in 1969, becoming only the second Bond girl to marry 007. Her co-star George Lazenby wrote on Instagram: 'I'm so sad to hear of the death of Diana Rigg. She undoubtedly raised my acting game when we made On Her Majesty's Secret Service together in 1968-9.'
The Lazenby garlic feud
The tribute came despite long-held rumours that the pair feuded on set, including a report that Rigg deliberately ate garlic before filming their love scenes to throw Lazenby off. Rigg condemned stories he had spread about her in the Daily Sketch in 1970, writing: 'I'm tired of reading those paranoid statements to the press wherein you were solely surrounded by hostile people. I agree that by the end of the film most of the crew were hostile, but only because of your extreme behaviour. No, George, I did not eat garlic on purpose.'
In 2015, Lazenby told the Daily Mail the garlic story was 'not true,' saying he and Rigg had once been in the canteen before a love scene when she stood up and joked, 'I've ordered something with garlic in it, I hope you have too!' which he said was later 'made into something bigger.' In his Instagram tribute, Lazenby recalled a press conference at the Dorchester in London and filming together in Switzerland and Portugal, adding: 'The death of Contessa Teresa di Vincenzo Draco created a memorable cinema moment over 50 years ago. As my new bride, Tracy Bond, I wept for her loss. Now, upon hearing of Dame Diana's death, I weep again.'
Marriages and family
After eight years living with married director Philip Saville, Rigg married Israeli painter Menachem Gueffen in 1973; the couple divorced in 1976. She later married theatrical producer and former Scots Guards officer Archibald Stirling, with whom she had Rachael. Diana and Stirling divorced in 1990 after his affair with actress Joely Richardson.
MeToo and equal pay
Rigg, who was made a dame in 1994 for services to drama, told Newsnight last year that she 'suffered a Me Too moment' early in her career at the hands of a 'powerful' film director. Speaking to the BBC in 2019, she said: 'I had one experience, which I'm not about to talk about but when I was very young, with a director who was very powerful. I simply, hardly acknowledged it was happening. I would urge women to use scorn whenever possible, because it sort of scorches the gentleman.'
During her time on The Avengers, Rigg discovered she was being paid significantly less than her male co-stars and threatened to quit unless producers gave her a pay rise, which they did. 'I was a lone voice in the wilderness, nobody backed me up,' she said. 'Pat Macnee kept his head well below the parapet when I stepped forward and said, "I think it's quite wrong that I'm being paid less than the cameraman." I've always thought that equal pay gets you a long way to being treated equally by a man.'
