Accomplished actress Natasha Richardson dies from ski injury

Published 5:00 am Thursday, March 19, 2009

Natasha Richardson

NEW YORK — Natasha Richardson, a gifted and precocious heiress to acting royalty whose career highlights included the film “Patty Hearst” and a Tony-winning performance in a stage revival of “Cabaret,” died Wednesday at 45 after suffering a head injury in a skiing accident.

Alan Nierob, the Los Angeles-based publicist for Richardson’s husband Liam Neeson, confirmed her death.

Richardson 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.

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.

If she never quite attained the acting heights of her Academy Award-winning mother, Vanessa Redgrave, she still had enjoyed a long and worthy career. 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 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.

Said Nierob’s statement: “(We) are profoundly grateful for the support, love and prayers of everyone, and ask for privacy during this very difficult time.”

Marketplace