Top 60 Diana Rigg Quotes

I loved the idea of playing this naughty old bag, offering her own explanation. It’s my idea of heaven.

It tends to be overlooked that many people are indirectly affected by thoughtless and cruel journalism.

I made a bit of a stink. At the time, it was considered very bad form.

They do say that the profession gets increasingly difficult, but my career seems to have been inside out.

I was nice and well-mannered because I was taught manners. I was very imaginative and quite adventurous. I was a tomboy, and I was always jealous that my older brother Hugh had bigger toy aeroplanes than me. I was always playing with boys’ toys; I don’t remember owning any dolls.

I’m in a position to do exactly what I want. I travel quite a lot. I read prodigiously. I go to the theater, to concerts. London is a wonderful city to live in.

There is a life after being at the pinnacle of your beauty. Plenty of life and fun.

I confess I do a lot of the wrong things: I smoke, and I drink wine, and people might be horrified at my eating habits – I eat when I’m hungry, and if I’m not, I don’t.

‘Medea’ is an enormous challenge for an actor physically, mentally, emotionally. You have to dig very, very deep, and to work, your performance has to be very personal.

To all the younglings I come across in ‘Game of Thrones’ who suddenly find themselves well known, I say the theatre is your best friend – they will remember you.

I’m portrayed as this tough broad, but I’m not.

I’ve played the Greek classics; I’ve played the English classics. I promise you, I’m not complacent, because I hope to be playing all sorts of stuff that I’ve never played before while the mind – and the body – still functions.

It’s particularly exhausting because Medea is defined by her determination. The role is all about endeavour.

I hope there’s a tinge of disgrace about me. Hopefully, there’s one good scandal left in me yet.

You hand the baton on, and that’s why roles like ‘Medea’ resonate for years and years, as each new actor comes to it.

Critics have to sit through an awful lot of rubbish, and you feel really sorry for them. In fact, I’ve been in a play where I felt sorry for the critics.

I am not aware of fans, because I don’t live that sort of life, but I am awfully grateful.

I thought it was ridiculous that I was being paid less than a cameraman, and I wanted to shame them. And I did.

It would be nice if they didn’t make me get up at 5 A.M. for a 12-hour day. My caravan is never big enough to lie down. There is no little doze. You are knackered by the time you get home. Knackered.

Yes, well, you are quite camp, so I guess that he could see the point of you.

If you’re earning equal pay to a man, you get respect. It shouldn’t be that way, but it is.

I come from a generation which definitely treated anyone older and more successful with reverence. But it’s much more democratic nowadays.

There is always one thing that turns you into an icon, an iconic image: in my case, a catsuit. But the icon 40 years later doesn’t really want to know because it’s not relevant to me.

Television has taught me an economy of style I didn’t have before. I feel it has done me nothing but good.

There were no prototypes for me – the telly was full of little blonde juveniles.

I’ve been in the business 60 years, and it’s taken me this long to play a scene with a monkey. That’s what happens if you stick around.

Once, when I was playing a nude scene in an indifferent play in New York, a critic wrote, ‘Diana Rigg is built like a brick basilica with too few flying buttresses.’ Do you think that’s fair?

We depend on the critics to give us a glimpse of what happened. Bernard Shaw championed Ibsen, who got the most terrible notices for his plays. Kenneth Tynan championed young writers, and as a result, the theatre has changed radically.

It’s a very powerful medium now, and should be celebrated as such, because we have the greatest television in the world.

I’m so lucky. I could be sitting at home crumbling, but I’m not.

You have to have the same power to lead the life you want as a man does, and that means earning the same amount of money. We still have a battle on our hands with that.

There was a guy called Carlos Thompson, who was I think Argentinian, and he was doing a series called ‘Sentimental Agent‘. That was the very first thing that I did. It was supposed to be taking place in some exotic location, but in actual fact, it was Chertsey with a few shivering potted palms.

I don’t generally give interviews unless I have to promote a play and had sworn years ago, having been bitten once too often, never to be interviewed by a woman again.

I love women but am aware we’re dangerous and deeply competitive, although I gave up being competitive long ago.

I would like to keep working forever. As long as they will have me.

‘Game of Thrones’ is wonderful. My theory is they employ all these British actors because, one, they are like me and grateful. Two, we turn up, and we know our lines. Three, we don’t demand a 60 ft. Winnebago and PA, and four, largely we are very uncomplaining.

They do say that the profession gets increasingly difficult, but my career seems to have been inside out. I’m playing the biggest parts now that I’m older. That’s probably right, because I wasn’t ready for them before.

Classes were incredibly boring. I took to dreaming. They took to punishing me. I was always working off punishments for not doing what I was supposed to do.

In the old days, a star was someone up there – you know, Greta Garbo – but a telly star was somebody you could approach.

I’m an old bag for the most part on ‘Game Of Thrones‘, so it’s so lovely to be glamorous – as glamorous as you can be at my age!

I think I’m a mousepad. I don’t want to be a mousepad, but I’m a mousepad. I’m also a screen saver, thank you very much. It’s weird.

In actual fact, I doubled ‘Twelfth Night‘ and ‘The Avengers‘. I was going backwards and forwards to Stratford. I played matinees Wednesday, matinee and evenings Saturdays, and the other days of the week, I was filming in Elstree.

These days, it’s perfectly normal to move between the theatre and television.

Tabloid newspapers are very rich and hold huge funds to fight claims.

I find the whole feminist thing very boring. They are so much on the defensive that they dare not love a man because they feel assaulted by being dependent.

I’ve been single forever, and, oh God, I love every minute of it. I don’t wish to sound offensive, and it always does when women say that, doesn’t it?

I would head to the countryside for peace and silence. That would be the best way, away from panicked, hysterical people.

I step into a character in my public life. People who don’t make that distinction are dooooomed.

I have no way of comparing myself to other people my age; I can’t compare myself with Jane Fonda, can I? I haven‘t had the work done. I admire the discipline of someone who maintains that degree of beauty, but I’m not prepared to do it.

I’ve always been on the side of fully emancipated women with independent minds.

If a man holds a door open for me or pulls back a chair so that this old bag can sit down, I’m delighted.

I cry all the time. Remembrance Day in particular. In fact, anything to do with veterans makes me sob.

It’s a question of economics. If you’re paid the same as a man, which now you are in this profession, you’re equal.

You can’t actually legislate what goes on in people’s minds and their attitudes, but you certainly can legislate for parity where pay and salaries are concerned.

I wouldn’t like to see a female Bond, because we wouldn’t want to lose the Bond girls. But we could have a lesbian Bond – why not?

I get tetchy with myself when I forget. I also get tetchy when directors ask you for take after take after take after take for no apparent reason. I’ve heard Maggie Smith gets tetchy for the same reason.

Some of those early photographs of me might as well be sepia. It’s always thought that I disclaim television and am too theatre, but the truth is ‘The Avengers’ bores me now. I was grateful because it catapulted me into stage stardom. It was good. I’m not ashamed of it. But I only did it for two years.

Do you know, I have no idea how I got ‘The Avengers’? I’d left the Royal Shakespeare Company, and I was one of a long list of girls, and got it on my audition.

Maybe at this stage in my career, it’s from that younger generation that I have most to learn.

I think women of my age are still attractive.