Diana Rigg

I've been in the business 60 years, and it's taken me this long to play a scene with a monkey. That's what happens if you stick around.

Do you know, I have no idea how I got 'The Avengers'? I'd left the Royal Shakespeare Company, and I was one of a long list of girls, and got it on my audition.

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.

Some of those early photographs of me might as well be sepia. It's always thought that I disclaim television and am too theatre, but the truth is 'The Avengers' bores me now. I was grateful because it catapulted me into stage stardom. It was good. I'm not ashamed of it. But I only did it for two years.

To all the younglings I come across in 'Game of Thrones' who suddenly find themselves well known, I say the theatre is your best friend - they will remember you.

Yes, well, you are quite camp, so I guess that he could see the point of you.

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.

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

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

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.

I read prodigiously as a child, and I still do.

I never get lonely; even as a child, I didn't.