DESPITE belonging to one of the most celebrated dynasties of British stage and screen, Natasha Richardson shunned the limelight and celebrity status, largely content to let her work speak for her and relishing family life with her husband and childre
n.
Richardson was the granddaughter of Sir Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson and the daughter of the director Tony Richardson and actress Vanessa Redgrave; the niece of actors Corin and Lynn Redgrave; the cousin of Jemma Redgrave; the sister of Joely Richardson; the ex-wife of the producer Robert Fox (brother of James and Edward); and finally the wife of Liam Neeson – the eponymous star of Schindler's List. Acting was part of her life and in her blood.
Natasha Jane Richardson – known throughout the acting profession as "Tasha" – started her theatrical career aged four, playing a bridesmaid to her mother in the film (directed by her father) Charge of The Light Brigade.
Her youth was not easy, her parents divorced when she was three. Richardson bought roses and send them to her mother from her father in the hope they would be reunited. They never were and Richardson spent the rest of her childhood travelling between her mother in London and her father in his large rambling villa in the south of France.
Neither was very reassuring as Vanessa Redgrave was often away and Tony Richardson delighted in filling the villa throughout the summer with theatrical friends.
Richardson was devoted to her father, but in her teens she found out that he was bisexual. She came to terms with the discovery, but was grief-stricken when he died of an Aids-related illness in 1991.
Richardson attended St Paul's Girls' School, in London, and then applied to the Central School of Speech and Drama without mentioning her surname.
In 1985, she made an auspicious West End debut along with her mother in Chekov's The Seagull. The play was produced by Robert Fox, and the two married in 1990.
Her first major film role came under Ken Russell's direction in the 1986 film Gothic. "I chose Natasha," Russell has written, "because of her ephemeral delicacy and intelligent beauty. Her part was quite demanding; the innocent and romantic Mary Shelley had to be played in such a way that the audience roots for her.
"Natasha was always poised, prepared, focused and very, very bright." They were qualities which were to stay with her throughout her career.
Various films in the United States followed (Patty Hearst, The Comfort of Strangers, Fat Man Little Boy and The Handmaid's Tale) in which she displayed an increasing confidence and authority.
In 1991, Richardson was in London for an award-winning performance in Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie and when the production transferred to Broadway her co-star was Liam Neeson. The two became close and Richardson divorced Fox in 1992. She accompanied Neeson to Poland where he was filming Schindler's List. Two years later they married and appeared with Jodie Foster in Michael Apted's Nell. But Richardson shied away from relying on her family reputation to get her work and she decided to live in New York and distance herself from the Redgrave name. "I could be my own person," she said in an interview. "I was appreciated for who I was and I felt a great sense of freedom."
She took on the challenging role of Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams's harrowing play A Streetcar Named Desire and then appeared in Patrick Marber's Closer.
She also made other films in the US (Widow's Peak, The White Countess and Asylum) before she returned in 2005 to London to appear in Ibsen's Lady From The Sea, directed by Trevor Nunn. It was a bold choice as the play had long been associated with her mother, but she won critical praise for her performance.
Her agent, Larry Dalzell, said of her: "Tasha was the most lovely person. Straightforward, scrupulously honest and never devious or difficult. Her performance in Lady From The Sea was magical – intense and numbing. When I retired Tasha organised all my clients to send in a short memory of our work together. She had them paged-up with a picture and bound into a book. It was a typical gesture of the kind-hearted girl she was."
Natasha Richardson is survived by her husband and their two sons.
