NEW YORK (March 18) — Tony-winning actress Natasha Richardson has died after suffering a head injury during a skiing accident at the age of 45. She was taken off of life support early Wednesday.
Alan Nierob, the Los Angeles-based publicist for Richardson's husband Liam Neeson, confirmed her death in a written statement.
Skip over this content Natasha Richardson, the Tony-winning actress and wife of actor Liam Neeson, has died after suffering head injuries during a skiing accident in Canada. She was 45 years old.
(FILES) (Shown L-R) Actress Natasha Richardson, Director James Ivory and actress Vanessa Redgrave pose during a photocall of the film "The White Countess", in this February 8, 2006 file photo in Rome. Actress Natasha Richardson was in a Montreal hospital March 16, 2009 after suffering a serious head injury in a skiing accident, People magazine reported. Richardson, 45, was rushed to a hospital near the Mont Tremblant ski area following Monday's afternoon's accident before being transferred to Montreal, the US celebrity magazine reported. British-born Richardson is the wife of Irish actor Liam Neeson, 56, and the daughter of British stage and screen actress Vanessa Redgrave, 72. AFP PHOTO / TIZIANA FABI (Photo credit should read TIZIANA FABI/AFP/Getty Images)
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NEW YORK - FEBRUARY 12: Actress Natasha Richardson attends the amfAR New York Gala at Cipriani on 42nd Street to kick off Fall 2009 Fashion Week on February 12, 2009 in New York City. Richardson is in a Montreal hospital after suffering injuries sustained in an skiing accident at the Mont Tremblant resort. (Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Natasha Richardson
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NEW YORK - MAY 08: Actress Natasha Richardson and actor Liam Neeson attend the American Ireland Fund's 33rd Annual New York Gala Fundraiser at The Tent at Lincoln Center on May 8, 2008 in New York City. Richardson is in a Montreal hospital after suffering injuries sustained in an skiing accident at the Mont Tremblant resort. (Photo by Joe Corrigan/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Natasha Richardson;Liam Neeson
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NEW YORK - APRIL 28: Actress Natasha Richardson attends the Chanel Tribeca Film Festival Dinner held at Ago at the Greenwich Hotel during the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival on April 28, 2008 in New York City. Richardson is in a Montreal hospital after suffering injuries sustained in an skiing accident at the Mont Tremblant resort. (Photo by Will Ragozzino/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival) *** Local Caption *** Natasha Richardson
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NEW YORK - MAY 08: Actress Natasha Richardson and actor Liam Neeson attend the American Ireland Fund's 33rd Annual New York Gala Fundraiser at The Tent at Lincoln Center on May 8, 2008 in New York City. Richardson is in a Montreal hospital after suffering injuries sustained in an skiing accident at the Mont Tremblant resort. (Photo by Joe Corrigan/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Natasha Richardson;Liam Neeson
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NEW YORK - JANUARY 23: Actors Natasha Richardson and Liam Neeson attend a special screening of "Seraphim Falls" hosted by The Cinema Society at the Tribeca Grand Hotel on January 23, 2007 in New York City. Richardson is in a Montreal hospital after suffering injuries sustained in an skiing accident at the Mont Tremblant resort. (Photo by Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images)
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NEW YORK - MAY 05: Actress Natasha Richardson arrives to the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Gala, Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy, held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 5, 2008 in New York City. Richardson is in a Montreal hospital after suffering injuries sustained in an skiing accident at the Mont Tremblant resort. (Photo by Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Natasha Richardson
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NEW YORK - JANUARY 31: Actress Natasha Richardson arrives at AmfAR's 10th Annual New York Gala at Cipriani's on January 31, 2008 in New York City. Richardson is in a Montreal hospital after suffering injuries sustained in an skiing accident at the Mont Tremblant resort. (Photo by Scott Gries/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Natasha Richardson
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NEW YORK - JANUARY 23: Actors Natasha Richardson and Liam Neeson attend a special screening of "Seraphim Falls" hosted by The Cinema Society at the Tribeca Grand Hotel on January 23, 2007 in New York City. Richardson is in a Montreal hospital after suffering injuries sustained in an skiing accident at the Mont Tremblant resort. (Photo by Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images)
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NEW YORK - APRIL 26: Actress Natasha Richardson and actor Liam Neeson leave Studio 54 after the opening of "A Streetcar Named Desire" on April 26, 2005 in New York. Richardson is in a Montreal hospital after suffering injuries sustained in an skiing accident at the Mont Tremblant resort. (Photo by Brad Barket/Getty Images)
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"Liam Neeson, his sons, and the entire family are shocked and devastated by the tragic death of their beloved Natasha," the statement said. "They are profoundly grateful for the support, love and prayers of everyone, and ask for privacy during this very difficult time."
The statement did not give details on the cause of death for Richardson, who suffered a head injury when she fell on a beginner's trail during a private ski lesson at the luxury Mont Tremblant ski resort in Quebec. She was hospitalized Tuesday in Montreal and later flown to a hospital in New York City.
Family members had been seen coming and going from the New York hospital where Richardson was reportedly taken.
Vanessa Redgrave, Richardson's mother, arrived in a car with darkened windows and was taken through a garage when she arrived at the Lenox Hill Hospital on Manhattan's Upper East Side at around 5 p.m. Wednesday. An hour earlier, Richardson's sister, Joely, arrived alone and was swarmed by the media as she entered through the back of the hospital.
TMZ reported on Tuesday that Richardson had fallen while taking a lesson on the slopes of the Canadian resort. They say there was no blood and no sign of impact. Two ski patrollers came to her rescue. When they got there she was conscious, smiling and making jokes.
An hour later, Natasha started to complain of a headache. Someone from the resort called 911, and she was taken to the hospital in an ambulance, still conscious.
It was a sudden and horrifying loss for her family and friends, for the film and theater communities, for her many fans and for both her native and adoptive countries. Descended from at least three generations of actors, Richardson was a proper Londoner who came to love the noise of New York, an elegant blonde with large, lively eyes, a bright smile and a hearty laugh.
Skip over this content Liam Neeson is spotted in New York just hours after the death of his wife, Natasha Richardson.
Get more Richardson news at TMZ and click for more pictures of Richardson's family supporting each other in New York.
>>> (FILES) (Shown L-R) Actress Natasha Richardson, Director James Ivory and actress Vanessa Redgrave pose during a photocall of the film "The White Countess", in this February 8, 2006 file photo in Rome. Actress Natasha Richardson was in a Montreal hospital March 16, 2009 after suffering a serious head injury in a skiing accident, People magazine reported. Richardson, 45, was rushed to a hospital near the Mont Tremblant ski area following Monday's afternoon's accident before being transferred to Montreal, the US celebrity magazine reported. British-born Richardson is the wife of Irish actor Liam Neeson, 56, and the daughter of British stage and screen actress Vanessa Redgrave, 72. AFP PHOTO / TIZIANA FABI (Photo credit should read TIZIANA FABI/AFP/Getty Images)
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NEW YORK - FEBRUARY 12: Actress Natasha Richardson attends the amfAR New York Gala at Cipriani on 42nd Street to kick off Fall 2009 Fashion Week on February 12, 2009 in New York City. Richardson is in a Montreal hospital after suffering injuries sustained in an skiing accident at the Mont Tremblant resort. (Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Natasha Richardson
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NEW YORK - MAY 08: Actress Natasha Richardson and actor Liam Neeson attend the American Ireland Fund's 33rd Annual New York Gala Fundraiser at The Tent at Lincoln Center on May 8, 2008 in New York City. Richardson is in a Montreal hospital after suffering injuries sustained in an skiing accident at the Mont Tremblant resort. (Photo by Joe Corrigan/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Natasha Richardson;Liam Neeson
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NEW YORK - APRIL 28: Actress Natasha Richardson attends the Chanel Tribeca Film Festival Dinner held at Ago at the Greenwich Hotel during the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival on April 28, 2008 in New York City. Richardson is in a Montreal hospital after suffering injuries sustained in an skiing accident at the Mont Tremblant resort. (Photo by Will Ragozzino/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival) *** Local Caption *** Natasha Richardson
Getty Images for Tribeca Film Fe
NEW YORK - MAY 08: Actress Natasha Richardson and actor Liam Neeson attend the American Ireland Fund's 33rd Annual New York Gala Fundraiser at The Tent at Lincoln Center on May 8, 2008 in New York City. Richardson is in a Montreal hospital after suffering injuries sustained in an skiing accident at the Mont Tremblant resort. (Photo by Joe Corrigan/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Natasha Richardson;Liam Neeson
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NEW YORK - JANUARY 23: Actors Natasha Richardson and Liam Neeson attend a special screening of "Seraphim Falls" hosted by The Cinema Society at the Tribeca Grand Hotel on January 23, 2007 in New York City. Richardson is in a Montreal hospital after suffering injuries sustained in an skiing accident at the Mont Tremblant resort. (Photo by Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images)
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NEW YORK - MAY 05: Actress Natasha Richardson arrives to the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Gala, Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy, held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 5, 2008 in New York City. Richardson is in a Montreal hospital after suffering injuries sustained in an skiing accident at the Mont Tremblant resort. (Photo by Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Natasha Richardson
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NEW YORK - JANUARY 31: Actress Natasha Richardson arrives at AmfAR's 10th Annual New York Gala at Cipriani's on January 31, 2008 in New York City. Richardson is in a Montreal hospital after suffering injuries sustained in an skiing accident at the Mont Tremblant resort. (Photo by Scott Gries/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Natasha Richardson
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NEW YORK - JANUARY 23: Actors Natasha Richardson and Liam Neeson attend a special screening of "Seraphim Falls" hosted by The Cinema Society at the Tribeca Grand Hotel on January 23, 2007 in New York City. Richardson is in a Montreal hospital after suffering injuries sustained in an skiing accident at the Mont Tremblant resort. (Photo by Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images)
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NEW YORK - APRIL 26: Actress Natasha Richardson and actor Liam Neeson leave Studio 54 after the opening of "A Streetcar Named Desire" on April 26, 2005 in New York. Richardson is in a Montreal hospital after suffering injuries sustained in an skiing accident at the Mont Tremblant resort. (Photo by Brad Barket/Getty Images)
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If she never quite attained the acting heights of her Academy Award-winning mother, she still had enjoyed a long and worthy career. As an actress, Richardson was equally adept at passion and restraint, able to portray besieged women both confessional (Tennessee Williams' Blanche DuBois) and confined (the concubine in the futuristic horror of "The Handmaid's Tale").
Like other family members, she divided her time between stage and screen. On Broadway, she won a Tony for her performance as Sally Bowles in a 1998 revival of "Cabaret." She also appeared in New York in a production of Patrick Marber's "Closer" (1999) as well as 2005 revival of Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire," in which she played Blanche opposite John C. Reilly's Stanley Kowalski.
She met Neeson when they made their Broadway debuts in 1993, co-starring in "Anna Christie," Eugene O'Neill's drama about a former prostitute and the sailor who falls in love with her.
"The astonishing Natasha Richardson ... gives what may prove to be the performance of the season as Anna, turning a heroine who has long been portrayed (and reviled) as a whore with a heart of gold into a tough, ruthlessly unsentimental apostle of O'Neill's tragic understanding of life," The New York Times critic Frank Rich wrote. "Miss Richardson, seeming more like a youthful incarnation of her mother, Vanessa Redgrave, than she has before, is riveting from her first entrance through a saloon doorway's ethereal shaft of golden light."
Her most notable film roles came earlier in her career. Richardson played the title character in Paul Schrader's "Patty Hearst," a 1988 biopic about the kidnapped heiress for which the actress became so immersed that even between scenes she wore a blindfold, the better to identify with her real-life counterpart.
"Natasha Richardson ... has been handed a big unwritten role; she feels her way into it, and she fills it," wrote The New Yorker's Pauline Kael. "We feel how alone and paralyzed Patty is — she retreats into being a hidden observer."
Richardson was directed again by Schrader in a 1990 adaptation of Ian McEwan's "The Comfort of Strangers" and, also in 1990, starred in the screen version of Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale."
Skip over this content The death of Mark Ruffalo's brother Scott (right) is still under investigation. Initially, a suspect said Scott killed himself during a game of Russian roulette, but the coroner then ruled it a homicide due to the angle of the gun. New reports claim police are close to making arrests.
She later co-starred with Neeson in "Nell," with Mia Farrow in "Widow's Peak" and with a pre-teen Lindsay Lohan in a remake of "The Parent Trap." More recent movies, none of them widely seen, included "Wild Child," "Evening" and "Asylum."
She was born in London in 1963, the performing gene inherited not just from her parents (Vanessa Redgrave and director Tony Richardson), but from her maternal grandparents (Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson), an aunt (Lynn Redgrave) and an uncle (Corin Redgrave). Her younger sister, Joely Richardson, also joined the family business.
Friends and family members remembered Natasha as an unusually poised child, perhaps forced to grow up early when her father left her mother in the late '60s for Jeanne Moreau. (Tony Richardson died in 1991).
Interviewed by The Associated Press in 2001, Natasha Richardson said she related well to her family if only because, "We've all been through it in one way or another and so we've had to be strong. Also we embrace life. We are not cynical about life."
Richardson always planned to act, apart from one brief childhood moment when she wanted to be a flight attendant — "wonderful irony now since I hate to fly and have to take a pill in order to get on a plane. I'm so terrified."
Her screen debut came at age 4 when she appeared as a flower girl in "The Charge of the Light Brigade," directed by her father, whose movies included "Tom Jones" and "The Entertainer." The show business wand had already tapped her the year before, when she saw her mother in the 1967 film version of the Broadway show "Camelot."
"She was so beautiful. I still look at that movie and I can't believe it. It still makes me cry, the beauty of it. I could go on and on — in that white fur hooded thing, when she comes through the forest for the first time. You've never seen anything so beautiful!" Richardson said.
She studied at London's Central School of Speech and Drama and was an experienced stage actress by her early 20s, appearing in "On the Razzle," "Charley's Aunt" and "The Seagull," for which the London Drama Critics awarded her most promising newcomer.
Although she never shared her mother's fiercely expressed political views, they were close professionally and acted together, most recently on Broadway to play the roles of mother and daughter in a one-night benefit concert version of "A Little Night Music," the Stephen Sondheim-Hugh Wheeler musical.
Before meeting up with Neeson (who called her "Tash") Richardson was married to theater and producer Robert Fox, whose credits include the 1985 staging of "The Seagull" in which his future wife appeared.
She sometimes remarked on the differences between her and her second husband — she from a theatrical dynasty and he from a working-class background in Northern Ireland.
"He's more laid back, happy to see what happens, whereas I'm a doer and I plan ahead," Richardson told The Independent on Sunday newspaper in 2003. "The differences sometimes get in the way but they can be the very things that feed a marriage, too."
She once said that Neeson's serious injury in a 2000 motorcycle accident — he suffered a crushed pelvis after colliding with a deer in upstate New York — had made her really appreciate life.
"I wake up every morning feeling lucky — which is driven by fear, no doubt, since I know it could all go away," she told The Daily Telegraph newspaper in 2003.
Liam Neeson, de 56 años, y su esposa, Natascha Richardson, de 45 años, han cumplido quince años de casados y tienen dos hijos, Michael, 13 años, y Daniel, 12
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Natasha Richardson en la de las galas en Nueva York de AmFAR, fundación para la investigación del Sida, enfermedad de la que murió su padre, el actor y director Tony Richardson, en 1991
NATASHA RICHARDSON, ESPOSA DE LIAM NEESON, SE DEBATE ENTRE LA VIDA Y LA MUERTE
En un primer momento la caída de la hija de Vanessa Redgrave, de 45 años, no parecía revestir gravedad. Sin embargo, poco después comenzó a sentir fuertes dolores de cabeza por el fuerte impacto que, según la prensa estadounidense, le podría haber producido la muerte cerebral
17 MARZO 2009
La mujer de Liam Neeson e hija de la actriz Vanessa Redgrave y el actor y director Tony Richardson resultó gravemente herida en la estación Mont Tremblant en Canadá tras sufrir un accidente mientras tomaba una lección de esquí en una pista de principiantes. En un primer momento Natasha Richardson, de 45 años, que no llevaba casco, bromeó sobre la caída y no quiso que le atendieran los médicos, incluso firmó un formulario de consentimiento y se marchó a la habitación de su hotel por su propio pie. Al parecer sus hijos, Michael, 13 años, y Daniel, 12, se encontraban junto a ella en el momento del accidente.
Una hora más tarde del incidente comenzó a sentir fuertes dolores de cabeza y llamó al 911. Una ambulancia le trasladó al centro hospitalario de Laurentien cercano a la estación. Desde allí la enviaron de urgencia al hospital de Sacré-Coeur en Montreal con un serio diagnóstico. El diario Montreal Gazette ha publicado que una persona del equipo médico confirmó que la actriz estuvo ingresada durante la noche del lunes en la Unidad de Cuidados Intensivos. Sin embargo, Richardson fue trasladada de nuevo y voló en un jet privado atendida por un equipo médico a una unidad especialista de otro hospital en un intento por salvar su vida. La ciudad de destino fue Nueva York, donde la esperaba toda su familia. Un amigo de la familia ha revelado a la revista People que "no hay esperanza" en que sobreviva porque "su corazón sigue latiendo pero ella tiene un diagnóstico de muerte cerebral".
Liam Neeson abandonó el rodaje de 'Chloe'
Su marido, que estaba grabando la película Chloe en Toronto, se trasladó a Montreal después de enterarse de la noticia, según confirmó un representante de la película. "Liam Neeson abandonó la grabación inmediatamente tras enterarse del accidente de su esposa. No tenemos ningún detalle en este momento, pero esperamos lo mejor y nuestros pensamientos y oraciones están con Natasha, Liam y su familia". La pareja se casó en 1994 y tiene dos hijos: Michael y Daniel.
Natasha es uno de los últimos eslabones de la dinastía Redgrave. Es hija de Vanessa Redgrave y actor y director Tony Richardson, nieta de Sir Michael Redgrave y hermana de Joely Richardson. Su debut en la gran pantalla vino de la mano de su padre en la película La carga de la brigada ligera, que él dirigió. Aunque ella apareció en conocidos títulos de Hollywood, como Juego de gemelas con Lindsay Lohan, o Sucedió en Manhattan con Jennifer López, ella es más conocida por su trabajo en el teatro. Ganó un premio Tony como mejor actriz en 1998 por su papel en la producción de Sam Mendes de , y fue aclamada por la crítica en la interpretación de Blance DuBois en la obra de Broadway de Un tranvía llamado deseo.
Su padre murió en 1991 a causa del Sida, después de confesar que era bisexual. Su fallecimiento la sumió en una profunda tristeza y años más tarde decidió unirse a la fundación Amfar, que contribuye a la investigación para luchar contra esta enfermedad.
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