On stage and screen, she was an attention-grabbing presence, a figure of intelligence and allure. In British theater history, she was a noted member of a famous acting family, including grandfather Michael Redgrave and mother Vanessa Redgrave. At home in New York City, she was wife to actor Liam Neeson, mom to Micheal, 13, and Daniel, 12. And in her last days, lying unconscious in hospitals after a skiing accident in Quebec, Natasha Richardson was a symbol of life’s fragility. She was 45.
Cast originally in pedigreed period roles by producers hoping she’d be the next Vanessa, Richardson instead carved out her own niche playing riskier, more modern movie women. She was Patty Hearst in an oneiric 1988 biopic and a lone rebel against a sterile future society in The Handmaid’s Tale.
But the stage was her true home. She shone as the doomed Swede Anna Christie in the Eugene O’Neill play, with future husband Neeson as her co-star; as one of the quartet of erotic flagellants in the Broadway production of Closer; and as a ferocious Sally Bowles in her Tony-winning Cabaret turn.
By the time of her obscenely early death, she was no longer the next Vanessa. She was her very own, very best Natasha Richardson.