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(1938– ). British actress.
Acted
in tv movies: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Hall 1959); The Worst
Witch (Robert Young 1986); Snow White (Michael Berz 1987); The
Haunting of Helen Walker (Tom McLoughlin 1995); Samson and Delilah
(Nicolas ROEG 1996); In the Beginning (Kevin CONNOR 2000).
In the episodes of The Avengers
featuring Rigg as Mrs. Emma Peel, Patrick
MACNEE's able associate, she was consistently a wonder to behold. She was
aware of and secretly amused by her sex appeal, which she could turn on and off
in an instant as needed. Always intelligent and alert to her surroundings, she
could perfectly adapt to any situation, whether it was carrying on clever
repartée with members of the Royal Family at a reception, extracting
information from a drunken lout in a seedy bar, or surreptitiously trying to
steal important documents from a scientist's laboratory. And she could defend
herself against any adversary—from common muggers to malevolent robots—with a
few well-placed karate chops. While some may lament how that once-serious spy
drama gradually descended into science-fictional silliness (as is especially
evident in the episodes specifically aimed at American audiences), MacNee and
Rigg always managed to maintain their aplomb and treated each new menace with
exactly the seriousness it deserved, so that even scenarios seemingly stolen
from rejected Doctor Who episodes made for watchable entertainment. Of
course, much of the program's appeal derived equally from Macnee's performance
as the suave and unflappable John Steed, but he was never better than when
paired with Rigg; it is hard to remember or care about the women who preceded
and followed her in various incarnations of the series. As for Uma Thurman's
embarrassingly disastrous take on Emma Peel for the film version of The
Avengers (1998), any additional criticism from this corner would be
superfluous; clearly, doing Diana Rigg is harder than it looks.
As is often the case when a performer
abandons a perfect role, though, Rigg's career after she left The Avengers
seems disorganized and unsatisfying. To prove her credentials as a Serious
Actress, she appeared in film versions of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer
Night's Dream and Julius Caesar (1970)—rather a waste of her
talents, really, but these are the sorts of things that British performers
regularly feel compelled to do. Seeking to avoid replicating the Peel character
as the Bond girl in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, she was a bit too
demure in the part, as if bizarrely channeling Tara King, and it was her
misfortune to join the franchise at precisely the moment when the lifeless
George Lazenby replaced Sir Sean
CONNERY, dooming the
project to failure. She was better employed in Theatre
of Blood, helping her father Vincent
PRICE
murder his critics with crisp efficiency, and in The Great Muppet Caper,
she dealt with absurd hand puppets demonstrating the same charm and competence
she had shown in response to the robots and mad scientists that infected The
Avengers.
When she entered her forties, Hollywood
stereotyping drove her away from playing heroines, so she took up hissing
villainy with characteristic energy, portraying Clytemnestra, the Mother from
Hell, in a television production of the Oresteia, and twice essaying the
classic role of the witched witch (in The Worst Witch and Snow White).
She crossed paths with Price again when she replaced him as the host of Mystery,
the American series that repackaged episodes from British television,
introducing the usually routine adventures with typical panache while she
otherwise busied herself in forgettable costume dramas and biblical epics;
still, she stood out in a supporting role in The Haunting of Helen Walker,
a new version of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw. Knighted for her
achievements in 1994, Rigg in her sixties, having battled mad scientists,
played Shakespeare, and apprenticed under Vincent Price, no doubt remains ready
for a few more tough assignments.
There is one remaining question: if Rigg was
indeed the perfect science fiction film heroine, why did she appear in so few
science fiction films? Part of the answer may lie in Rigg's own career choices,
as she often seemed more interested in living down her role as Mrs. Peel than
in building upon it. But a sadder explanation would be the persistent sexism of
a genre that, with a few spectacular exceptions (like Weaver in the Alien
films), continues assigning men to do all the work and keeping its women
helpless or unassertive. (Imagine, for example, how much better Logan's Run
[1976] would have been if Rigg had been cast in Michael
YORK's
part.) It is significant that the producers of the Bond films allowed her to
tone down her character, and that American television, challenged to devise an
appropriate vehicle for her talents, implausibly chose a Mary Tyler Moore-ish
sitcom, Diana (1973-1974), where she floundered for one unsuccessful
season. There is, then, one part that Diana Rigg does not play well: the
domesticated animal.
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