Legendary actress Diana Rigg made impassioned plea to legalise assisted dying shortly before her ‘truly awful’ 2020 death from cancer

By Liam On Dec 10, 2023

James Bond actress and Game of Thrones star Diana Rigg made an impassioned plea to legalize euthanasia shortly before her “truly horrific” death from cancer in 2020.

Now, three years later, her actress daughter Rachael Stirling has released a statement recorded by Rigg in the final weeks of her life, calling for people to be given “true freedom of choice over their bodies at the end of life.”

It is currently illegal in the UK to assist someone in dying, and MPs have consistently voted against any changes to the law, but assisted dying is currently the subject of an investigation by Parliament’s Health and Social Care Committee.

In a post published today on ObserverRigg said of her death from cancer: “They don’t talk about how terrible, how gruesome the details of this condition are and the shame that is associated with it.”

She added that it was time for more debate and changes to the law to help people who want a choice in the matter.

James Bond actress and Game of Thrones star Diana Rigg made an impassioned call for euthanasia to be legalized shortly before her “truly horrific” death from cancer in 2020.

In the final weeks of her life, the Avengers star recorded a statement calling for people to have “true freedom of choice over their bodies at the end of life.”

“This means giving people true freedom of choice over their bodies at the end of life,” she added.

Rigg also revealed details of how she had only six months to live and lost control of her bowels – something she calls “inhumane”.

She also talked about how palliative care nurses recognize that some people in her situation will end up starving themselves.

“It’s not that they want to die this way. That’s how they take control,” she explains.

Rigg, pictured with co-star Patrick Macnee in The Avengers, said in the recording that it was time for a change in the law to help people who want to choose assisted dying.

Dame Diana Rigg pictured with her then 17-year-old daughter, actress Rachael Stirling.

Rigg starred alongside George Lazenby in the James Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

Rigg’s daughter said she would go public with her mother’s comments to continue the debate over assisted dying.

The late Avengers star is the latest of several high-profile figures to support changes to the law, including the Great British Bake Off. judge Dame Prue Leith.

Leith, 83, has spoken publicly about her experience of watching her brother David die “horribly” more than a decade ago.

The Yorkshire girl who became a silver screen star and the first wife of James Bond

Dame Diana rose to fame as Emma Peel in the sixties series The Avengers and later as a Bond girl.

But she has also played numerous Shakespearean roles and had a long career, most recently appearing as the powerful matriarch Olenna Tyrell in Game of Thrones.

Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg was born in Doncaster on July 20, 1938.

She trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1959.

The actress quickly established herself there with important roles in productions of The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth and King Lear.

She then had huge success as Emma Peel, a secret service agent in The Avengers starring Patrick Macnee.

But Dame Diana was unhappy with the invasion of privacy that came with her presence on television and was also critical of the way she was treated by TV bosses.

She also discovered that she was paid less than the cameraman.

“In those days it was very, very intrusive because you could immediately recognize me,” the actress later told Variety.

“I was grateful for the success, but there was a price to pay.”

In 1969, she played Bond girl Tracy in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, opposite Bond actor George Lazenby, with whom she had a difficult relationship.

In the 1970s she joined the National Theatre, where she played leading roles in Tom Stoppard’s Jumpers, The Misanthrope, Pygmalion, Antony and Cleopatra and Stephen Sondheim’s Follies.

In the nude scene she performed in Abelard and Heloise, one critic described it as “built like a brick mausoleum with insufficient buttresses.”

As a result, she published a book of the worst theater reviews ever, titled No Turn Unstoned. It was a bestseller.

She said that although her brother had bone cancer, he “eventually died of pneumonia because the only way to kill himself was to stop taking the antibiotics that he was given because he kept getting pneumonia.”

She added: “That meant he died a really terrible death because dying from pneumonia is like drowning.” It was terrible”.

Leith, a patron of campaign group Dignity in Dying, recalls how her brother was given morphine every four hours but the pain relief lasted only three hours.

As a result, she said, he “screamed and screamed in absolute agony” for several hours every day.

Watching him suffer, she said, made her wonder why dying people couldn’t die on their own terms. Mr Leith died in 2012 aged 74.

Rigg died after a short battle with cancer in 2020 at the age of 82.

Best known for her roles in The Avengers, Game of Thrones and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, she is a veteran star of stage and screen. has been hailed as an icon of theatre, film and television.

Paying tribute to Rigg, Stirling said: “My beloved mother died peacefully in her sleep early this morning, at home, surrounded by family.

“She died of cancer diagnosed in March and spent her final months joyfully reflecting on her extraordinary life, full of love, laughter and deep pride in her profession.

“I will miss her beyond words.”

Dame Diana was best known for her role as Emma Peel in The Avengers and more recently for her role as Olenna Tyrell in Game of Thrones, for which she was nominated for an Emmy Award.

She also played Countess Teresa di Vicenzo, the only woman to ever marry James Bond, opposite George Lazenby in his only performance as 007 in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

Dame Diana has also had roles in ITV’s Victoria and Channel 5’s All Creatures Great and Small, and won an Emmy Award for her role as Mrs Danvers in Rebecca in 1997.

In 1990, she received a Bafta award for her role in the film A Mother’s Love.

Dame Diana was also a well-known stage actress and received the first of three Tony nominations for her role in Ronald Millar’s Abelard and Heloise.

The actress was awarded a damehood in 1994 for services to drama.

Playwright Sir David Hare said: “In middle age, Diana Rigg underwent a stunning change of direction as a great classical actress.

“When Emma Peel played Euripides’ Medea, Martha Albee and Brecht’s Mother Courage, she swept away everything in front of her.”

Fellow playwright Sir Tom Stoppard said: “For half her life Diana was the most beautiful woman in the room, but she used to be called a soldier.”

“She went to work with her sleeves rolled up and a smile for everyone.

“Her talent was brilliant.”

Rigg, who died in 2020, spent her final months “joyfully reflecting on her extraordinary life, full of love, laughter and deep pride in her profession,” her family said.

In one of Rigg’s last roles, the iconic actress played Mrs. Pumphrey in the film All Creatures Great and Small.

Diana Rigg plays ruthless matriarch Oleanna Tyrell in HBO’s internationally popular Game of Thrones, a series she admitted in 2019 she had never watched.

Theater director Jonathan Kent said: “Diana Rigg’s combination of personality, beauty, courage and sheer emotional power has made her a great classical actress – one of an amazing generation of British stage performers.

“I was lucky enough to direct her in a series of great classical roles – Medea, Phaedra – in the Ted Hughes version especially written for her – Mother Courage and Dryden’s Cleopatra.

“Her dazzling wit and unmistakable voice have made her an unforgettable leading figure in British theatre.”