Rachael Stirling has a ritual that only she fully understands.
Before every opening night, the 49-year-old British actress takes a grain or two of her mother Dame Diana Rigg’s ashes and silently ingests them. Rigg was the actress behind one of the most memorable Bond Girls alongside George Lazenby, star of ‘The Avengers’ in the 60s and part of the cast of ‘Game of Thrones’ before she died of cancer in 2020, at the age of 82. Stirling recounts it in her new memoir, ‘All About My Mother’, which goes on sale September 10.
She writes about it without mincing words: she says the gesture feels completely natural to her and that feeling her mother this way, in such a literal form, makes her feel protected every time she walks toward the stage. Rigg hid her diagnosis from her in March 2020, while her daughter was performing in ‘Love Love Love’. Now, five years later, Stirling has found her own way not to leave her behind.
