A smoker from the age of 18, Rigg was still smoking 20 cigarettes a day in 2009. By December 2017, she had stopped smoking after serious illness led to heart surgery, a cardiac ablation, two months earlier. A devout Christian, she commented that: "My heart had stopped ticking during the procedure, so I was up there and the good Lord must have said, 'Send the old bag down again, I'm not having her yet!'" In a June 2015 interview with Stephen Bowie of "The A.V. Club", Rigg also commented about the chemistry between Patrick Macnee and herself on "The Avengers", despite being 16 years apart: "I sort of vaguely knew Patrick Macnee, and he looked kindly on me and sort of husbanded me through the first couple of episodes. After that we became equal, and loved each other and sparked off each other. And we'd then improvise, write our own lines. They trusted us. Particularly our scenes when we were finding a dead body—I mean, another dead body. How do you get 'round that one? They allowed us to do it." She also said about the improvisation of the dialogue: "Not for an instant, no. Well, when I say improvising, Pat and I would sit down and work out approximately what we'd say. It wasn't sort of...who's the American duo? Mike Nichols and Elaine May. It was definitely not that." Asked if she had ever stayed in touch with Macnee (the interview was published two days before Macnee's death and decades after they were reunited for one last time on her short-lived American series "Diana"): "You'll always be close to somebody that you worked with very intimately for so long, and you become really fond of each other. But we haven't seen each other for a very, very long time." Her first grandchild, a boy named Jack (born to Rachael Stirling and Elbow frontman Guy Garvey), was born in April 2017. Rigg received honorary degrees from the University of Stirling in 1988, the University of Leeds in 1992, and London South Bank University in 1996. Rigg was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1988 New Year Honours and a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) for services to drama in the 1994 Birthday Honours. In 2014, Rigg received the Will Award, presented by the Shakespeare Theatre Company, along with Stacy Keach and John Hurt.