Natasha Richardson

Whether “breed comes to the greyhound”, or “like father, like son”, the proverb falls short to justify the professional career of this Londoner. Natasha Richardson is an actress like so many others. But few are the ones that she can boast of her heritage like hers. Her family tree is worth tracing: Natasha is the daughter of actress Vanessa Redgrave and director Tony Richardson . She is also a sister, granddaughter, niece, cousin, great-granddaughter, ex-sister-in-law and ex-daughter-in-law of actors. As if that were not enough, she is the ex-wife of producer Robert Fox and the current wife of renowned actor Liam Neeson, with whom she has been married for fourteen years. She comments on her kin: “My family is made up of a series of people who have worked very hard since they were teenagers. Part of my life has been glamorous and part has been incredibly unglamorous, compared to other middle-class families. I have lived in four-star hotels and in a simple “‘bed and breakfast'”.

It is therefore not uncommon for Natasha to participate in a film for the first time at the age of five. She was in The Last Charge (1968), a film directed by her father and starring her mother, with a brief role as a girl who throws flowers at a wedding. In this way, she lived in the first person the experiences that marked the life of her family. Even so, it was not until five years later that she appeared for the second time in a film: The police arrest, the law judges., in which his intervention lasts just a few seconds. In the words of the actress herself, it was her father who encouraged her the most since she was little in her career. Although both her father and her mother were clear that the girl would have to study before starting her journey on stage. She, Natasha, played her part until she was 16 years old, when she dropped out of school to dedicate herself to the theater. She trained at London’s Central School of Speech and Drama. This preparation helped him win numerous awards and nominations and it is that the theater has been the one that has most recognized the work of Natasha Richardson. In 1992 she won the London Drama Critics Award for Best Actress for “Anna Christie,” in which she co-starred with her later husband, Liam Neeson.

Despite her theatrical successes, Natasha Richardson has never disassociated herself from the cinema. It was in 1986 when she agreed to her first leading role in Gothic , an English production that recreates part of the life of Mary Shelley , creator of Frankenstein. Her performance caught the attention of Paul Schrader who called her to star in Patty Hearst (1988), a biopic of the controversial granddaughter of magnate William Randolph Hearst. With this tape, she became known in the United States, which allowed her to make North American and European productions in which she combined her leading role with her high school ones.

His leading roles include those in the drama The Pleasure of Strangers (1990), the futuristic The Maiden’s Tale (1990), the comedy El favor, el reloj y el gran pescado (1991), the costumbrista comedy El beak of widows (1994), or the environmental drama Nell (1994) with her husband Liam Neeson and the “little savage” Jodie Foster . In her career she has played dark characters of great intensity: “Let’s just say I’ve done it looking for the light, its hidden sunny recesses. I know it’s strange, but I feel comfortable walking to where the painful emotional material is, in it I find a connection and a way of expression”.

Natasha abandoned this complex character line to star in the remake of the family comedy You to Boston and I to California (1961) in You to London and I to California (1998); she also falls into the comedy genre It Happened in Manhattan (2002), alongside Jennifer Lopez . Although she soon returned to her life, the deep characters in films such as Heaven (for television) (2002), Obsession (2005) and The Russian Countess(2005), in which she plays a Soviet aristocrat who flees Russia after the revolution and becomes a lady-in-waiting to support her family. Something that Natasha did not lack on the set since her mother and her aunt Lynn were part of the cast. Slowly but surely, Natasha Richardson has developed her professional life in the theater, film and television. She is also a family woman and likes to spend time with her two children and her husband. Even so, she never stops and each step is another step in her career. Thus, two years after The Russian Countess , she returned to work with her mother in the romantic drama El atardecer . Shortly after she was secondary in the tape for adolescents Megapetarda, which has become his latest film work. On March 18, Natasha died at Lennox Hill Hospital in New York, victim of a brain injury. The actress had fallen two days earlier while she was skiing in Canada. Despite the fact that the blow did not seem to be serious, an hour after the fall she had to be rushed to the hospital. Neither Canada nor the United States could do anything for her. The family with Liam Neeson at the head and the two children of the marriage -Michael, 13 years old and Daniel, 12- have sent a statement showing the shock caused by the sudden death of Natasha for whom the curtain has fallen prematurely; she was 45 years old.