RIP Natasha Richardson

[DSJ]

May her family find comfort in this difficult time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natasha_Richardson

[Mike B]

Yes, I agree. That's a terrible tragedy. I was just watching "The Parent Trap" a few weeks ago. RIP.

[Lion]

For the family, loss is never easy!!!

[Taffi Abernathy]

I am incredulous since she was just on "Top Chef" as a guest judge a few weeks ago. It's very sad.

[srl7741]

It's very sad and I really enjoyed her work.

[ijen0311]

What a shocking tragedy

[Bisquitlips]

So very sad!

Liam Neeson is one of my favorite actors.

[ocwatching]

wow..with out TRF...I would not have known that she had passed...
just read the AP story..wow...what a tragedy...

[Ashley]

I heard about this last night, but I had no idea who she was. I know she was married to someone else famous. I hope her family unites and stays strong together. RIP

[Boopie]

I agree, what a shocking tragedy. I think the only movie of hers I've seen was the "Patty Hearst" movie about 10 years ago (I saw it well after it came out). I like Liam Neeson (what's not to like about the guy who played Oskar Schindler), but all I can think about is their two kids.

[bodybump]

when its time for you to go..with a simple accident can lead to your grave...So sad thing to happen...and so sad to end you death like that..

[Ashley]

http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movi...son/index.html
This is a nice, informant obituary

[JJ Irani]

Very sad and tragic indeed.

JJ

[Marrk]

This afternoon, when I learned of this, I was overcome with emotion. Such a lovely girl. Good actress, too.

[Latrodectus]

Very, very sad.

[elgatonegro]

Actress, 45, died after suffering head injury after fall at ski resort

MONTREAL - 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 from a skiing accident.

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.

Proper Londoner who loved 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, 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.

For more info..you may check this site natasha site.

May her soul rest in peace.

[Jimbits76]

Sad a beautiful, gracious and talented actress from a beautiful, gracious and talented family.

A true ambassador for the arts in this land.

She will be missed.

J

[vapalux]

A sad loss. May her family be allowed the dignity of not being followed everywhere

May she rest in peace

Si

[kcmo]

I am still in disbelief. Such a tragic loss. Her family is in my thoughts and prayers...

[Watchdog]

I liked her so much in The Parent Trap. She just seemed the epitome of class and style.

[away36]

I have to admit, I have no idea who this woman was. Al and I never go to movie theaters and never rent movies. However, I am familiar with her husband Liam Neeson's career and my heart aches for any man who has lost the love of his life so suddenly and tragically and who will now be faced with the daunting task of raising his children on his own. It is a tragic and painful reminder to all of us to appreciate those we have and those we love because life never guarantees what the next moment may bring.

[unclesallie]

Originally Posted by away36

I have to admit, I have no idea who this woman was. Al and I never go to movie theaters and never rent movies. However, I am familiar with her husband Liam Neeson's career and my heart aches for any man who has lost the love of his life so suddenly and tragically and who will now be faced with the daunting task of raising his children on his own. It is a tragic and painful reminder to all of us to appreciate those we have and those we love because life never guarantees what the next moment may bring.

well said. cheers.

[brainbizz]

It is indeed sad and shocking. This is what i pieced together. She initially refused any medical treatment on the slopes and several hours later called 911. She was then taken to the closest hospital and transferred when stable to a speciality hospital an hour away. Reportedly to late by the time she got there. It is a tragedy and was most likely avoidable. If she would have left with the ambulance or had been in the states this most likely could have been taken care of with a simple operation. It reminds me of another such tragedy...Lady Di. Her poor family must be demoralized. I wish them well.

[TheDude]

I heard an interview on the radio last week (on Howard Stern actually) where Dr. Drew Pinsky offered the opinion that there must have been more to her injury. He seemed quite suspicious.

He surmised that she might have had an undiagnosed AVM (arterio-venous malformation). He said that if one of these gets "knocked", that it will simply just bleed and bleed quite severely.

He also offered that if it had been "simply" a subdural hematoma, that she'd have had hours to get this surgically repaired, and that it shouldn't have been an issue.

[brainbizz]

Dr Drew could not be more wrong. Dr of what? Dr Suess was also a doctor. Text book epidural hematoma. There is no scientific evidence of any trauma causing an avm or aneurysm to rupture. No evidence of headache before she fell. Also in Canada it is a big issue since they do not have many helicopters and neurosurgeons are not at many hospitals. The delay cost her.

[TheDude]

Originally Posted by brainbizz

Dr Drew could not be more wrong. Dr of what? Dr Suess was also a doctor. Text book epidural hematoma. There is no scientific evidence of any trauma causing an avm or aneurysm to rupture. No evidence of headache before she fell. Also in Canada it is a big issue since they do not have many helicopters and neurosurgeons are not at many hospitals. The delay cost her.

I'll defer to you since your login name leads me to believe that you're probably a brain surgeon.

I think he was positing that perhaps the hit on the head caused an AVM to rupture (his guess) and bleed more than an epidural hematoma might.

I guess he made the assumption that she had received "appropriate" lifesaving care "in time".

[onkyo]

Originally Posted by brainbizz

Dr Drew could not be more wrong. Dr of what? Dr Suess was also a doctor. Text book epidural hematoma. There is no scientific evidence of any trauma causing an avm or aneurysm to rupture. No evidence of headache before she fell. Also in Canada it is a big issue since they do not have many helicopters and neurosurgeons are not at many hospitals. The delay cost her.

I am not a brain surgeon but another type of physician....

Even a medical student would agree this is a classic epidural hematoma death. Epidural rupture is an arterial rupture not like a subdural hematoma which is venous. Arterial rupture is like rupturing a water line in your house. Venous rupture is like a break in your household drain (much less pressure). All in a closed space (skull).

Unfortunately, she probably would have died in the US as well. The one hour delay before seeking medical attention was a death sentence. I do think her chances would have been better in the US than Canada if she did seek medical attention immediately. There is a reason everyone with head trauma in the US gets a CT scan (few exceptions)



PS the treatment of epidural hematoma is relatively simple (and brainbizz can confirm this).... burr hole. Drill a hole through the side of the head and drain the blood. Life saving.

[brainbizz]

She was reportedly talking when being transferred to the first hospital she would have most likely survived in the US. The timeline was unbelievably long. Its a lot of speculation but still is tragic.

[onkyo]

Originally Posted by brainbizz

She was reportedly talking when being transferred to the first hospital she would have most likely survived in the US. The timeline was unbelievably long. Its a lot of speculation but still is tragic.

Oh, I did not know that. What a shame.

Thanks Brainbizz.