Rachael Stirling planning to write book about mother Dame Diana Rigg

Rachael Stirling planning to write book about mother Dame Diana Rigg

Dame Diana Rigg’s daughter is going to write a biography of the late actress.

The ‘Game of Thrones’ actress died of cancer in September 2020 and after Rachael Stirling previously wrote about her mother’s views on assisted dying, based on a recording of her opinion, she plans to go back to her old tapes and letters to pen a book about the late star, though she doesn’t want it to be a formal memoir.

She told The Times newspaper: “Having had to write the piece about assisted dying, I want to write about her being alive. I want to do it and make it funny.”

The 46-year-old actress – who has six-year-old son Jack with husband Guy Garvey – still speaks to her late mother “as if she is still here” and was “thrilled” by a recent vivid dream she had, in which Diana appeared.

Asked if she still talks to Diana, she confirmed she does and said: “But it is more as if she is still here, all the time.

“I had the most intense dream about her last night where she was taking my glasses off, which I now wear for reading.

“She took my glasses off and put them on and told me that I had totally the wrong prescription lenses.

“And then my son came in and jumped on top of me. Oh, Dr Freud! Maybe there’s something there about my not seeing something clearly. I don’t know.

“But I was really thrilled because I felt like I hung out with her for a little bit.”

The ‘Avengers’ actress moved in with her daughter and her family in her final days, with Rachael acting as her full time carer, and she is happy her mother passed away surrounded by “absolute love”.

She said: “It didn’t feel like [a sacrifice]. It felt like we had a laugh. We made it funny. We laughed all the time. We made a choice as a family: get busy living and come home to die.

“I think what she learnt at the end was how much she didn’t need to be self-sufficient because I was going to be there for her. We went through the encyclopaedia of mother-daughter, from incredible closeness to separation and then coming back together.

“At the end, there was just nothing but absolute love. One of her best friends said, ‘I’ve never seen her so happy than almost at the end.’

“She was surrounded by an unutterable, unquestioning love.”