Quotes from Diana Rigg

I regard bed as my best friend.

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.

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

I love being directed. Because it's another thought, it's another fresh idea. You're so grateful for an original idea that you haven't had.

I rely upon the directors to fill me in before a shot.

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

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.

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?

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.

Years ago I was at a function, and I must have said something really rude to Paul Daniels the magician. I can't recall what I said, but I remember him looking utterly crestfallen. I'm not that sort of person, but I must have said something very cutting and belittling. Our paths haven't crossed since, but if they had, I would have said sorry to him.

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 was very, very young, living in India. I'd been put to bed in the afternoon, and I had that lovely feeling you have when you're about to nod off. I remember the yellow curtains of the room blowing in the wind and feeling blissfully happy and content.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

I didn't know what to do with the fan mail. I had a little mini, and I used to put it at the back of my mini, and it grew and grew.