The Stage

Natasha Richardson dies aged 45

Published Thursday 19 March 2009 at 08:11 by Michael Quinn

Actress Natasha Richardson has died after suffering head injuries in a skiing accident.

The 45-year-old daughter of Vanessa Redgrave and the late Tony Richardson died last night in Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, 48 hours after sustaining a serious head injury while on a skiing holiday in Mont Tremblant, north of Montreal.

Her death followed a fall on the training slopes of the Laurentian Hills in Ontario. Although the accident was reported as being “a normal fall”, Richardson had not been wearing a helmet at the time and had been escorted off the slopes by instructors despite seeming well. She began to complain of pain an hour later and was taken to hospitals in Mont Tremblant and Montreal before being transferred to New York.

Richardson was described as an actress “whose career melded glamorous celebrity with the bloodline of theatre royalty”. Her grandfather was Sir Michael Redgrave and she followed her mother Vanessa and her siblings, Lyn and Corin, and her sister, Joely, into acting with considerable success.

Richardson came to national attention in 1985 playing Nina in The Three Sisters in an acclaimed touring production that later transferred to London, where it was joined by Vanessa Redgrave as Arkadia. For her own performance, Richardson received a London Drama Critics’ Best Newcomer Award. She achieved star status in the United States in a 1993 Broadway revival of Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie, and went on to win a Tony Award for her performance of Sally Bowles in Sam Mendes’ production of Cabaret in 1998.

She was later to marry her co-star in Anna Christie, Liam Neeson, with whom she had two sons. Richardson had been previously married to the producer, Robert Fox.

More recently, she had starred in a number of Hollywood films, moving easily between hard-hitting docu-dramas (Patty Hearst), literary adaptations (The Handmaid’s Tale) and romantic comedy (The Parent Trap).

Ken Russell, who directed Richardson in his 1986 film, Gothic, said: “She was one of the few modern actresses who was as smart as she was pretty, and as gentle as she was fierce.”

Richardson’s family was with her when she passed away and her death was announced at just before midnight last night. A statement said: “Liam Neeson, his sons, and the entire family are shocked and devastated by the tragic death of their beloved Natasha.”

Michael Attenborough, artistic director of the Almeida Theatre, said: “Natasha was a beautiful human being in every conceivable way - gracious of manner, witty and sharp of mind, sunny in disposition and stunning in appearance. She was completely her own woman, brave, determined and totally committed to her two major loves - her family and her work. Typical of her courage was her eagerness to take on the role of Ellida here in Ibsen’s The Lady From the Sea, a part her mother had previously made her own in a legendary performance. I cannot think of anyone finer than her to have played the leading role in my first production at the Almeida.”