It's really, really hard to balance being a "character actor" with being a "movie star" - the ability to submerge into convincingly different characters is often at the expense of having the repeated characteristics from film to film that make people buy tickets to see that on-screen persona again and again.frank wrote:The "actor" vs the "star" thing is tied to an intangible X factor that comes across in their performance. It's a charisma that goes beyond whatever acting talents they may or may not have. That charisma is bankable since it serves as a major motivator for large masses of people to want to see them if they are starring in a new tv show or to spend money to see them perform in a film or stage
Some actors choose or are given roles that are sufficiently similar that the persona goes on from movie to movie without damaging the integrity of the characters - James Mason and Jimmy Stewart for example, maybe Peter O'Toole; others have great difficulty in not standing out like a sore thumb in later productions - to me, Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, even Marlon Brando, sometimes seem like square pegs in a round hole in some of their films.
Diana Rigg is very much a character actor. I don't know if she even cared to become a movie star. She seemed to like pure acting and the variety it offers, hence all the stage work as it is closest to what she likes.