[Deathwatch] Natasha Richardson, actress, 45

[Deathwatch Central <cdw@slick.org>]

Natasha Richardson dies at 45
By John Horn

March 19, 2009

Natasha Richardson, the luminous British actress from one of the
world's great acting families, whose performances ranged from the
high-brow drama "The Handmaid's Tale" to the lightweight comedy "The
Parent Trap" and the Tony-winning Broadway production of "Cabaret,"
died Wednesday. She was 45.

The wife of "Schindler's List" actor Liam Neeson and daughter of
actress Vanessa Redgrave and the late film director Tony Richardson
died at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. The cause of death was not
announced, but she had been hospitalized after suffering a devastating
brain injury while skiing Monday.

"Liam Neeson, his sons and the entire family are shocked and devastated
by the tragic death of their beloved Natasha," said a statement
released by publicist Alan Nierob. "They are profoundly grateful for
the support, love and prayers of everyone, and ask for privacy during
this very difficult time."

Richardson was injured at Mont Tremblant, a luxury resort in Canada.
The actress was taking a lesson on a beginner's run near the bottom of
the ski area and was not wearing a helmet when she had what first
appeared to be a minor accident.

She initially reported that she was well, but soon started to complain
of a headache. Hours after the fall, the star of a number of acclaimed
stage plays -- including "Anna Christie," "A Streetcar Named Desire"
and "Closer" -- slipped into unconsciousness, and she was transported
Tuesday from a Montreal hospital back to New York, where she was
surrounded by family and friends.

The actress' most recent film credits came in last year's "Wild Child"
opposite Emma Roberts and 2007's "Evening" with Meryl Streep, Claire
Danes and Redgrave. The "Evening" part was one of a number of recent
roles Richardson had had in productions with her closest relatives. On
television, she appeared as a guest judge on the just-concluded season
of the cooking show "Top Chef."

Richardson was born in London on May 11, 1963. In addition to Redgrave,
other actors in her family include sister Joely Richardson, a star of
the television series "Nip/Tuck," and aunt Lynn Redgrave, whose film
credits include "Georgy Girl" and "Gods and Monsters." Richardson's
grandfather was legendary Shakespearean actor Michael Redgrave.

Her father was an acclaimed writer, director and producer who won the
directing and best picture Oscar for 1963's "Tom Jones." Tony
Richardson, who died in 1991 at age 63, also directed "Look Back in
Anger" and "A Taste of Honey."

The actress' 72-year-old mother, who won the supporting actress Academy
Award for 1977's "Julia," still acts in theater and film.

Just before the skiing accident, Richardson was considering a Broadway
revival of Stephen Sondheim's "A Little Night Music" with her mother,
after a highly praised one-night January staging at New York's Studio
54.

Although Richardson may have come from royal show business blood, she
did not try to use her ancestry to advance her career, but rather saw
her family's creative business as something of a classroom.

"I know the pressures of being the daughter of a great actress,"
Richardson said in a 2005 interview with London's Independent
newspaper. "But it's inspiring. You learn so much that other people
don't get to learn until later on. My father being a director, I
[learned] a real work ethic. You think: 'One day, I'd like to be as
good as that.' But when I was starting out professionally, I had a
level of attention put on me that I didn't deserve or wasn't ready for.
And it was hard, particularly in England, to make my way."

Richardson trained at London's Central School of Speech and Drama,
hiding her family connections, and subsequently picked up minor parts
in little-known theater and television productions. In 1985, she made
her West End debut, playing the troubled young actress Nina in Anton
Chekhov's "The Seagull." A year later, Richardson was cast in her first
prominent movie role, starring in director Ken Russell's "Gothic" as
"Frankenstein" author Mary Shelley.

A variety of more prominent movie and stage roles followed, but
Richardson often gravitated toward artier film productions, with
mainstream movies more exception than rule. Despite her British roots,
she often played iconic American characters -- including Patty Hearst
(in a movie of the same name), Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams' "A
Streetcar Named Desire" and the title role in Eugene O'Neill's "Anna
Christie."

With a gravelly, seductive voice (once compared to a combination of
honey and iron filings), Richardson was frequently willing to play
emotionally vulnerable roles. "I just feel for her," she told the Times
in 1993 about Anna Christie. "Her anger and her loneliness and her
pain."

Richardson's movie choices in 1990 exemplified her creative taste. That
year, she starred in "The Comfort of Strangers," a drama about a couple
(Richardson and Rupert Everett) trying to repair a failing
relationship, and "The Handmaid's Tale," an adaptation of Margaret
Atwood's novel about a future theocracy. Hinting at her growing
interest in theater, the screenplays for both movies were written by
the playwright Harold Pinter.

Richardson made her Broadway debut in 1993, playing opposite Neeson in
"Anna Christie." She was married to producer Robert Fox at the time;
they divorced that year, and she married Neeson in 1994. The couple had
two sons together, Micheal and Daniel, and Richardson left acting for
three years when they were born.

"I have a famous mother, and it took me years to get over that," she
once told London's Mirror. "Now I have this really famous husband. I
definitely feel a loss of confidence. Perhaps that's partly why I love
living in New York, being free of all that family baggage, being open
to all sorts of possibilities."

Richardson continued to appear in movies, with the highest-profile
roles coming in the 1998 remake of "The Parent Trap" opposite Lindsay
Lohan and Dennis Quaid, and 2002's romantic comedy "Maid in Manhattan"
with Jennifer Lopez.

But Richardson's most distinguished work was delivered inside London
and New York's theaters: as Sally Bowles in director Sam Mendes'
revival of "Cabaret" in 1998 (for which she won a Tony and a Drama Desk
award); a year later in the Broadway production of Patrick Marber's
"Closer"; reprising a role once played by her mother in the 2003 London
production of Henrik Ibsen's "The Lady From the Sea"; and 2005's
Broadway revival of "A Streetcar Named Desire."

Los Angeles Times reviewer Laurie Winer said of her "Cabaret"
performance: "Wearing a slip, torn stockings and dirty hair, she
dazzles simply by lifting her huge, wondrous eyes -- lined in
yesterday's stained makeup -- tearfully to the theater's low balcony."

In his Times review of "Closer," Michael Phillips wrote: "On stage, the
unglamorously glamorous Natasha Richardson has a wonderful way of
asking a question as if it were a statement, as if the question mark
were extraneous and obvious. She does that in a way that reveals,
warily, a bit of her character's insides."

Richardson was often drawn to stories that illuminated a character's
deepest -- and sometimes darkest -- secrets.

In 2005's "Asylum," a movie she spent seven years getting made (taking
an associate producer credit to help move it forward), Richardson
played Stella, the unhappy wife of a psychiatric hospital doctor. The
film, in which Richardson's character is drawn to a mental patient,
failed to attract an audience in the United States, but it did bring
the actress several British honors.

"One of the reasons I related to Stella, and why I think a lot of women
relate to her, is that we've all had moments in life when you look at
the edge of the abyss and think, 'Am I going to throw caution to the
wind?' " she said in a 2006 interview with London's Evening Standard.
"Most of us decide to pull in the reins. Stella doesn't."

In addition to the revival of "A Little Night Music," Richardson in
recent years performed in several other projects with her closest
relatives. In the 2005 film "The White Countess" she appeared opposite
Lynn and Vanessa Redgrave. Two years later, she and her mother played a
mother and daughter in "Evening."

Many thanks to Deathwatch Central for posting this obituary