Natasha Richardson life and biography

Richardson was born and raised in London, a member of the Redgrave family, known as a theatrical and film acting dynasty. She was the daughter of director and producer Tony Richardson and actress Vanessa Redgrave.
Richardson's parents divorced in 1967.The following year, she made her film debut at the age of four in an uncredited role in The Charge of the Light Brigade, directed by her father.

Richardson was educated in London at two leading independent schools, the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle in South Kensington, London and St. Paul's Girls' School in Hammersmith, London, before training at the Central School of Speech and Drama.

Richardson began her career in regional theatre at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds. Her first professional work in London's West End was in a revival of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull in 1985. Soon after, she starred in a London stage production of High Society, adapted from the acclaimed Cole Porter film.
In 1998, she played the role of Sally Bowles in Sam Mendes' acclaimed revival of Cabaret on Broadway, for which she won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical. The following year she returned to Broadway in Closer, for which she was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play, and in 2005, she appeared again with the Roundabout, this time as Blanche DuBois in their revival of Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, opposite John C. Reilly as Stanley Kowalski.
In January 2009, two months before her death, Richardson played the role of Desirée in a concert production of Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music, opposite her mother, Vanessa Redgrave who played Mme. Armfeldt. The two were slated to headline a brand new Broadway production (which became the current Broadway revival directed by Trevor Nunn), which never came to fruition.

Richardson portrayed Mary Shelley in the 1986 film Gothic, a fictionalized account of the author's creation of Frankenstein. The following year she starred opposite Kenneth Branagh and Colin Firth in A Month in the Country, directed by Pat O'Connor. Director Paul Schrader signed her for the title role in Patty Hearst, his 1988 docudrama about the heiress and her alleged kidnapping. Her performances opposite Robert Duvall and Faye Dunaway in The Handmaid's Tale and Christopher Walken, Rupert Everett, and Helen Mirren in The Comfort of Strangers (directed by Schrader) won her the 1990 Evening Standard British Film Award for Best Actress.
In 1991 she appeared in The Favour, the Watch and the Very Big Fish alongside Bob Hoskins. He later credited her with giving him the best kiss of his life during the film. "She got hold of me and kissed me like I've never been kissed before. I was gobsmacked". She was named Best Actress at the 1994 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival for Widows' Peak, and that same year appeared in Nell opposite Jodie Foster and future husband Liam Neeson.
Additional film credits include The Parent Trap (1998), Blow Dry (2001), Chelsea Walls (2001), Waking Up in Reno (2002), Maid in Manhattan (2002), Asylum (2005), which won her a second Evening Standard Award for Best Actress, The White Countess (2005), and Evening (2007). Her last screen appearance was as headmistress of a girls' school in the 2008 comedy Wild Child.
During the last week of January 2009, she recorded her offscreen role of the wife of climber George Mallory, who disappeared while climbing Mount Everest during a 1924 expedition, in the 2010 documentary film The Wildest Dream, for which Liam Neeson provides narration. Director Anthony Geffen described listening to the film since her death as "harrowing."

Richardson made her American television debut in a small role in the 1984 CBS miniseries Ellis Island. That same year she made her British television debut in an episode of the BBC series Oxbridge Blues. The following year she appeared as Violet Hunter alongside Jeremy Brett and David Burke in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, in the episode entitled "The Copper Beeches". She starred with Judi Dench, Michael Gambon, and Kenneth Branagh in a 1987 BBC adaptation of the Henrik Ibsen play Ghosts; with Maggie Smith and Rob Lowe in a 1993 BBC adaptation of Suddenly, Last Summer by Tennessee Williams; portrayed Zelda Fitzgerald in the 1993 television movie Zelda; and starred in Haven (2001) on CBS and The Mastersons of Manhattan (2007) on NBC.

Richardson's first marriage to filmmaker Robert Fox lasted from 1990 to 1992. She married Irish actor Liam Neeson in the summer of 1994 at the home they shared near Millbrook, New York; she had taken American citizenship. Richardson and Neeson have two sons: Micheál (born 1995) and Daniel (born 1996). Richardson helped raise millions of dollars in the fight against AIDS; her father, director Tony Richardson, died of AIDS-related causes in 1991.

On 16 March 2009, Richardson sustained a head injury when she fell while taking a beginner skiing lesson at the Mont Tremblant Resort in Quebec, about 130 kilometres (81 mi) from Montreal. The injury was followed by a lucid interval, when Richardson seemed to be fine and was able to talk and act normally. Paramedics and an ambulance which initially responded to the accident were told they were not needed and left. Refusing medical attention twice, she returned to her hotel room and about three hours later was taken to a local hospital after complaining of a headache.
She was transferred from there by ambulance to Montreal, in critical condition and was admitted about seven hours after the fall. The following day she was flown to Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, where she died on 18 March. An autopsy conducted by the New York City Medical Examiners Office on 19 March revealed the cause of death was an "epidural hematoma due to blunt impact to the head", and her death was ruled an accident.

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