Diana Rigg has revealed that she suffered a Me Too moment early in her career at the hands of a “powerful” film director.
The veteran star of Game Of Thrones and the Avengers said she welcomed the emergence of the Me Too movement as a means for women to speak out following her experience as a young actress.
She also urged women put in a similar position by men to pour their “scorn” on would-be abusers.
Speaking on Newsnight, Rigg, who played powerful matriarch Olenna Tyrell in Game Of Thrones, said she had suffered an incident which would now fuel the Me Too movement.
Rigg, 80, said: “I had one experience, which I’m not about to talk about but when I was very young, with a director who was very powerful.
“I simply, hardly acknowledged it was happening. I think scorn is quite a powerful tool. I would urge women to use scorn whenever possible, because it sort of scorches the gentleman.”
“I’m all for the women who speak out, and I’m very glad that they now have a platform to speak out.”
Rigg has also said that equal pay is a powerful way of gaining equal treatment, and has spoken out in the past about her lack of pay parity.
She discovered that she was being paid less than her male Avengers co-stars and crew, despite being a key character.
Rigg said: “I was a lone voice in the wilderness, nobody backed me up. Pat Macnee kept his head well below the parapet when I stepped forward and said ‘I think it’s quite wrong that I’m being paid less than the cameraman’.
“Of course then I was painted as this sort of mercenary woman, and hard headed and money grabbing and all the rest of it. But it struck me as being unfair so I spoke out.
“I’ve always thought that equal pay gets you a long way to being treated equally by a man.”