Dame Diana Rigg, the only woman to ever marry James Bond and one of the more delightful political animals on Game of Thrones, died on Thursday at age 82, the BBC reported. No cause of death was immediately given.
Born in Doncaster, England in 1938, Rigg’s fame all but exploded in 1965 when she was cast as Emma Peel on the British spy series The Avengers. The show, which began airing in the United States during Rigg’s debut season, launched her to global recognition thanks to the witty repartee she shared with costar Patrick Macnee (and her form-fitting attire).
“Becoming a sex symbol overnight shocked me,” Rigg said in a 2019 interview. “I didn’t know how to handle it, and I kept all the unopened fan mail in the boot of my car because I didn’t know how to respond and thought it was rude to throw it away. Then my mother became my secretary and replied to the really inappropriate ones, saying: ‘My daughter’s far too old for you. Go take a cold shower!’”
Rigg starred on The Avengers for three years, but her time on the show wasn’t without conflict. After finding out she was being paid less than one of the cameramen on the series, she fought for pay equality during a time when the entertainment industry at large was not having those conversations. “That was my first battle with male authority,” she said in a 2019 interview with Variety. “I made a bit of a song and dance about it and demanded more. I was ahead of the game, in that respect, because nobody backed me up. There was no sisterhood. In those days, you were on your own.”
“I was painted as this mercenary creature by the press when all I wanted was equality,” Rigg said in a separate interview, conducted around the same time that actresses like Jennifer Lawrence and Ellen Pompeo were openly talking about pay disparity in Hollywood. “It’s so depressing that we are still talking about the gender pay gap.”
Rigg left The Avengers in 1968 and was next widely seen in 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the first James Bond film without Sean Connery in the leading role. In that film, opposite George Lazenby, Rigg’s character famously married 007—the only Bond girl to ever get the promiscuous secret agent to tie the knot. Their marital bliss was short-lived, however, as Rigg’s Contessa Teresa di Vicenzo was killed almost immediately after the wedding.
But while Bond and Teresa found love onscreen, the relationship between Lazenby and Rigg was famously contentious. At the time, Lazenby even accused Rigg of eating garlic before their love scenes to make her breath smell. “It was just so petty and ridiculous,” she said in 2011. “I didn’t.”
Of Lazenby, she added, “He was really difficult. It’s not for nothing that they didn’t offer him any sequels. He was just difficult. He needed help. Not in the acting; he was really quite good, wasn’t he? Attractive and sexy and all those things. But just difficult off-stage. He kind of thought he was a film star immediately, and started throwing his weight around.”
Post-Bond, Rigg worked consistently and relentlessly on stage and screen—but it was her turn on Game of Thrones that provided the actress with a huge profile boost toward the end of her life. She was cast as Lady Olenna Tyrell in season three of the hit HBO series, and earned four Emmy nominations for her work—while also providing fodder for countless memes, thanks to her no-nonsense line delivery and matter-of-fact demeanor.