Natasha Richardson, joined in majority at 45

Born in the shadow of her Oscar-winning mother, Vanessa Redgrave, and married for 14 years to Oscar-nominated Irish actor Liam Neeson, Natasha Richardson once joked with Hollywood's leading magazine PEOPLE, "I've spent half my life trying to get away from being Vanessa Redgrave's daughter, and now I've got to get away from being Liam Neeson's wife."


But Richardson – whose family announced her death Wednesday after a ski accident that resulted in severe brain trauma – was far from an also-ran: the smoky-voiced actress carved an impressive niche on stage with her Tony-winning turn as the vampy Sally Bowles in Cabaret and in films as varied as Gothic and The Parent Trap.


Off screen, Richardson, who was 45, relished her role as Manhattan hostess – and doting mother to her two sons.


Beginner's Slope
Richardson was vacationing in Canada Monday when injuries sustained from what at first appeared to be a minor fall on the beginner's slope at Quebec's Mont Tremblant soon turned serious. She was evacuated to a hospital in Montréal and joined there by her husband, who had been filming in Toronto. Richardson was then flown to New York, where members of her family, including her mother and sister, Nip/Tuck star Joely Richardson, gathered at her bedside.


Following the announcement Wednesday night of the "tragic death of their beloved Natasha," the family group, led by a despondent yet dignified Neeson, left the hospital for the couple's home on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Neeson made a point of acknowledging the crowd on the street outside the high-rise building before disappearing inside.


A member of Britain's greatest surviving theatrical dynasty, Natasha, whose grandfather was actor Sir Michael Redgrave, made her film debut in 1968 at the age of four, playing opposite her mother in The Charge of the Light Brigade. A family affair, the film was directed by her father, Tony Richardson, although by then her parent's marriage had already ended.


Yet it was on the stage that Richardson made her mark first. After training at London's Central School of Speech and Drama, she was cast in a production of The Seagull and won the London Theater Critics Award for Most Promising Newcomer in 1986. She earned a Tony nomination for her New York stage debut in Anna Christie – where she first encountered co-star and future husband Liam Neeson – and picked up a Tony Award in 1998 for Cabaret.

Venkateshwarlu Bulemoni