The great Diana Rigg has passed from cancer at age 82. She lived a radiantly full life and enjoyed a long, vibrant career (her first professional gig happened in 1957 at age 19, performing in the RADA production of Bertolt Brecht‘s The Caucasian Chalk Circle), and I felt a genuinely poignant pang when I learned of her death this morning.

I understand that I’m obliged to celebrate (a) her Emma Peel role in The Avengers, (b) her wife-of-James-Bond turn in In Her Majesty’s Secret Service (’69) and (c) her ongoing performance as Olenna Tyrell in Game of Thrones. But for me Rigg’s sincere but sardonic performance as Barbara Drummond in Arthur Hiller and Paddy Chayefsky‘s The Hospital (’71) was her absolute finest moment.

The fact that Rigg was a pack-a-day smoker for 53 years straight (1956 until 2009) probably had something to do with her passing, but then again that was her choice. Quality over quantity, she probably felt. How anyone could believe that inhaling foul cigarette smoke for decades on end constitutes quality is beyond me.