Herbie J. Pilato understands this and pays special attention to Rigg's most iconic roles in his new book One Tough Dame: The Life and Career of Diana Rigg. Despite the brevity of his book, he still manages to touch upon her other most prominent roles on screen and stage, while also providing the basics about her personal life and a very clear idea of her personality. That last part probably wasn't too hard since Rigg's personality was enormous. Any quote from her will inevitably arrive draped in a cape of casual self-deprecation, irrefutable authority, mild exasperation, and bawdy humor. Fortunately, there are a lot of such quotes in One Tough Dame.
What makes this story truly interesting is the tension between the things fans projected on her and her own perceptions of herself and the world. She clearly thought and behaved as a feminist, but she refused any such label, and dismissed the notion of Emma Peel as feminist icon. Yet she boldly fought for equal pay in the sixties when such actions by women brought nothing but sexist consternation, lived a good deal of her life without a man, and would tear you a new one if you dared patronize her. She loathed the sex symbol status that came with squeezing into Peel's cat suit and hated finding out what some of her more ardent admirers were really thinking. So, even though this slim 168-page book occasionally toddles off track— as when Pilato relays amateur reviews pulled off of Amazon or imdb, or allows Juliet Mills to go on at length about the secrets of a successful marriage for no apparent reason— One Tough Dame still gives a solid idea of who Diana Riff was.
