RIP Dame Diana Rigg

Sad news. I saw her on stage three times, All For Love (Dryden), Little Eyolf (Ibsen) and as Cleopatra. The first two of those very good, the third a very poor production unfortunately.

I saw her in My Fair Lady, where she was very good. Sad news.

My favourite Bond girl, and the only one to ever get a ring in 007’s finger. She was so beautiful, I had a major crush on her when I was a kid.

Great actress and so beautiful.

(You usually move my RIP posts to the performers part of the board)

Saw her in Mother Courage at the National. She was one of the great actresses. RIP.

Very sad news. Time for a rewatch of the Mrs Bradley Mysteries I think.

Completely different roles in her later life in two of the greatest tv programmes. Equally different brilliant in The Detectorists and Game of Thrones

Her Medea at the Almeida is one of the greatest performances I've had the privilege of seeing. Likewise superb in Phedre and Britannicus at the Albery. Such a powerful actress on stage, commanding and elemental

Her death has made me cry, as she and her glorious characters have been with me since my teens. I have adored her since her rSC days, then of course the avengers. A favourite film is The Assassination Bureau, and on stage probably was Medea - still recovery from the sheer viseral darma of that. She brought class, intelligence, strength, wit, recently barbed wit, sheer elegance, and just pure brilliance to every part. And she was the best thing in the disastrous film of A Little Night music. Oh and there was her Lady Macbeth, Eliza Doolittle, so many many moments. And yes she was beautiful, and blessed with that cracked voice. A classy lady and I am so upset, and as it happens we are screening Theatre of Blood at our cinema in south Manchester in two weeks, which i will be introducing. Condolences to Rachel.

Yet one more reason 2020 is the worst year ever...

I love all the tales of her on Broadway last year, giving wonderfully generous tea parties between performances of My Fair Lady, and being vocal when some younger members of the cast thought it OK to indulge in the six shows a week malarkey. a couple of years back she did a lovely programme looking into the Lark ascending. I have wondered why she wasn't involved in the two big theatre celebrations of recent years, the NT at 50, and the RSC 400 years since shakespeare's death. I hope it was her personal choice not to be involved and not that she was not invited. she seemed never to be mentioned in the same breath as dame Judi and dame Maggie, but she should have been. maybe she kept herself to herself. The brief tribute by Vanessa Redgrave was kind, especially as they have some history. I really am so upset that she has gone, she was always there doing exciting brilliant work, and it was always a treat to see her on stage. Having seen her Eliza back in the 70's with Alec McCowan as Higgins I would have loved to seen her Mrs higgins - every line a zinger delivered as a gloriously withering putdown. Of the many shows i saw her in was the Misanthropist, which I confess, went right over my head, but it was glamorous and everyone on stage was having such fun. And then Heartbreak house, and more recently Suddenly Last summer. But yes medea, and Clytemnestra on tV. Dame Diana was a great performer you werer, and oh THAT moment in Extras. Thank you, thank you.

Even though i actually saw her on stage only once - in a rather underwhelming production of The Cherry Orchard, in Chichester in 2008 - Diana Rigg played a huge part in my taking interest in British theatre. As we were under all sorts of embargos in the early 90s, including cultural ones, our Tv stations took to digging up old TV shows as they couldn't always get hold of the new ones, which resulted in the first re-run of The Avengers since they were shown in the 60s and I became obsessed with both the show and Diana Rigg. Not only did she look like the whole 60s fashion and style had been invented just for her, but she had such a fabulous comic timing and a knack for silliness that fit the show so well - I've never seen someone who could pull such ridiculous faces yet still look gorgeous. And The Avengers were unlike any other show I'd seen before, i tried to get some schoolmates into it but couldn't really explain what kind of show it really was (a parody of the action/spy/sci-fi genres? or just a bit of 60s irreverent stylish fun loosely shaped into episodes with ridiculous plots? who knows) But I loved it so much that I even got hold of a pair of my mum's 70s orange flannel pyjamas and tried to alter them so as to get an emmapeeler and then tried to go to school wearing it... Anyway,a little later, I discovered that the Belgrade British library had issues of Plays&Players you could read for free and that's how I discovered she was a theatre actress as well, so I made sure to read every issue of the magazine that reached the library and, along the way, got more and more interested in British theatre, even though, at the time, I didn't really think I'd ever be able to actually make it to London, and when I finally did over a decade later, and actually got to see Diana Rigg on the stage, to say I was in a bit of happy shock would have been an understatement. Looking back, I'm a bit sad I was totally ignorant of the Uk theatre customs such as stage dooring, so I never thought of trying to meet her and get my programme signed. I only have this photo of yours truly as a souvenir: