Natasha Richardson Dies

Sad news, RIP.

agree on the head injury thing, had a friend who was in a car accident and hit his head on the B-pillar, not even hard enough to give him a concussion. Half hour later he had a brain aneurysm. He would have died if he wasn't already in the ER with his buddy who broke his ankle in the crash.

 

RIP.

Truly a loss. I've always liked her.

 

Wow......so tragic. My heart goes out to her family and friends.



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 age 45 after suffering a head injury during a beginners' ski lesson. Alan Nierob, the Los Angeles-based publicist for Richardson's husband Liam Neeson, confirmed her death in a written statement.

"Liam Neeson, his sons (Micheal and Daniel), 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.

Family members had been seen coming and going from the New York hospital where Richardson was 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 about 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.

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.

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."

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.

___

Associated Press Writer Jill Lawless in London and Drama Writer Michael Kuchwara in New York contributed to this report.

 

This is such a tragedy.

Reminds me of how trivial my problems are.

Thoughts go out to her friends and family.

 

She got hurt on the Bunny slope no less. You go from talking to feeling bad to death in a day or so. Tragic is right.

 

Very tragic news and sympathies to her family. I wonder if it is advisable for people who have suffered a head injury to fly unless it is an absolute necessity. I 'd tend to think the last thing you'd want for a possible hemorrhage is a change in air pressure. In any case, sad, sad news, she was one of my favourite actors.

 

very very sad, RIP. Such a sad ending to a wonderful life and career. Can't imagine what her kids are going through.

 

This really sums it all up.

RIP and prayers to the family.

 

Very sad, I wonder if she would still be around if she did not fly to NY. I wonder if that compounded the issue.

 

The incident stimulates concerning questions. Is the Canadian health care system adequate and effective?
Lessons learned, most importantly wear a helmet during activities which involve potential impact (i.e. skiing, biking, etc.).

 

RIP

After falling backwards and hitting my head snowboarding in January I know just how improtant it is to wear one at all times. Please protect your head.

 

The ambulance was turned away once it arrived.(hope they had her sign the waiver) Plus, the accident was a freak and she was walking around after and coherent. I'm not even sure that a helmet would have necessarily lessened the jolt she had to the head when she fell over on the bunny slope. Anyway, absolutely nothing to do with the medical care up there which in many cases is better than the US as it is available to everyone. RIP.

 

From the news report
"Richardson was seemingly fine after she fell, but about an hour later, she complained that she didn't feel well. She was hospitalized Tuesday in Montreal and later flown to a hospital in New York, where she died Wednesday."



Why were they flying her to New York from Montreal?

 

I can't see how a sudden change of altitude would have been helpful to her condition.

 

1. Cause the Canadian healthcare system is horrible.
2. Something else I can't remember.

 

Very sad news. Just reminds me why everyone in my family wears a helmet when skiiing. Since we all purchased them , my mother, father, and cousin have all taken falls that would have been more serious without one. Cousin hit her head on a tree. My dad took a fall and hit his head on ice. My mom was knocked over by a snowboarder that was out of control. Needless to say, it is a necessary "insurance policy" for less than $100.

Also, don't turn down medical attention when it is offered. She apparently refused to get checked out by the on-site medical staff.

 

Her death is very similar to what happened to Mark Donohue. She obviously suffered significant head trauma and likely internal bleeding that put pressure on her brain.

No one could have possibly known that was occurring, perhaps even Natasha herself. I have a friend that was a wrestler, and his head collided with another wrestler's. My friend was fine, but then a week later he got dizzy and fell. Only then did they realize he had internal hemorrhaging putting pressure on his brain. In fact, they weren't sure if he would require brain surgery or even LIVE. Luckily, he survived, but it can happen that quickly.

What I don't understand is how she hit her head and if she hit anything other than the ground.

 

RIP.... really sad....

Lesson to be learned here...

Mike in Kuwait

 

Incredibly sad. Horrible, horrible thing to occur. Condolences to the family.

From a ER physician in training, an avid skiier and a Montrealer:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/03/18/brain.injury/index.html

This article does a reasonable job of explaining what i)could have happened and ii)why it when unnoticed initially only to precipitate so rapidly

Regardless, all conjecture is irrelevant as a young person tragically lost her life. Be safe, wear helmets when any risk of traumatic brain injury, and be sure to tell your loved ones you love them.

 

This just reminded me of a kid I attended high school with. He was involved in a car accident just outside the neighborhood. He was walking around after the accident, I'm not sure the time frame or exactly what happened but he died within hours following. He had internal bleeding.

 

Don't know but, a $50K+ bill from Canada or zip on your own insurance in New York might have something to do with that decision.

 

It doesn't look like any siutation too different from what most of us have experienced at some point in our lives. You take a fall horsing around and brush it off. No big deal and we're men, right? Walk it off. I probably would have done the same as she did if offered medical attention if I fell on the bunny slope. Then I probably would have dosed up on Advil if I was feeling off or sore later. Hit the jacuzzi, have a drink.

I also wouldn't think of wearing a helmet since I never push it nor go on a slope where I might take a bad fall. I always thought wearing a helmet made you look like a hotdogger or a poseur. Makes me rethink this.

Sad day but honestly I don't think that things would have turned out differently. An hour after a fall do you think they could have diagnosed her condition accurately? It is Canada. My guess is we might instead be discussing the quality of Canadian health care today when they missed her diagnosis.

I really liked her as an actress and a person too. Bummer.

 

yes, epidural.

This is different from a subdural hematoma which is usually very slow as its venous rather than arterial. IIRC Pres Reagan got a subdural in a fall from a horse.