Top 55 Diana Rigg Quotes

I have always thought of myself as rather a happy person. Apart from a few knocks along the way, I consider myself to have been extremely lucky.

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 don’t mean to be oily, but critics are very much part of the theatre.

It may be a masculine attitude to take lovers, but it’s definitely prevalent. I’m certainly not the oldest person doing it – not that I’m doing it right now, but when I was.

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.

We have no companies now, not in the sense that I know, that nurture actors. It’s very depressing that, given the money they get, the companies today don’t number up in my estimation. They should be bringing on young talent, and they don’t.

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.

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

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

When my marriage broke up, I went to three separate therapists, and each was worse than the last. I can only speak for myself. There are other people it’s been incredibly useful for, but not me.

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.

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.

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

I think politicians misjudge our intelligence. We can, and do, see through them. But I quite enjoy watching political programmes because they get the heart going.

‘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.

The opportunity to be bizarre – I am bizarre, aren’t I? – is just so wonderful, isn’t it?

I think Thespis just wanted to be a solo player, you know?

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

If you have a good inner life, you don’t get lonely. I’ve got a good imagination. I don’t miss romance.

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

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.

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.

When I started, TV was regarded as something that wasn’t as great as film or theatre or radio, but it has proved to have far greater powers than those.

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

I’ve been utterly and completely castigated from time to time.

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.

You’ll always be close to somebody that you worked with very intimately for so long, and you become really fond of each other.

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?

If you get serious about yourself as you get old, you are pathetic.

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!

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

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.

All these old images of me floating across the screen, the terrible chasm of what you were and what you are. I know who I am, but these people who see me as I was then don’t.

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

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

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

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

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.

The older you get, I have to say, the funnier you find life. That’s the only way to go.

I think women of my age are still attractive.

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

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

I’m really grateful for ‘Game of Thrones’. It’s something wonderful to happen to an actress of my age, and Dubrovnik is astonishingly beautiful.

I love ‘Mastermind’. It’s touching that people spend so much time learning. I do have quite good general knowledge, but I wouldn’t consider going on the show. I also like watching ‘Only Connect.’

I think you have to know someone to truly dislike them, don’t you? That said, I’d shove most politicians into a cauldron and boil them up.

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.

If it were said that I didn’t fulfil my potential as a mother and wife, I’d be heartbroken. But if it were said that I hadn’t fulfilled my potential as an actress, I would understand the reasons why.

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

I’d love to have done more film, but you can’t have everything.

Most of the women in Greek tragedies have their fates predetermined. The gods dictate that such and such will happen to them, and everything they predict comes true. Not Medea.