British actress and noted theatrical family. Natasha has proven herself to be just as theatrically gifted as her famous mother, Vanessa Redgrave and father, Oscar-winning director Tony Richardson. She won a Tony award for Best Actress in a musical in the Broadway revival of Cabaret in June 1998. With her soft, smoky voice, she has won critical acclaim in London’s West End and on Broadway. Despite her success, Natasha suffers from the huge weight of her flamboyant family heritage and went in for therapy to help deal with her feelings of inadequacy as the wife of Liam Neeson and the daughter of Vanessa Redgrave.
Natasha suffered a lonely childhood. She desperately wanted stability and order in her life. Her father, film director, Tony Richardson left her mother when the girl was three years old. Her mother was pregnant with her sister Joely at the time. In spite of the divorce, her parents remained close, loyal friends. Her mother became active in the Socialist Workers Revolutionary Party at the time when her daughter was nine. Her mother’s radical political stance caused Natasha tremendous heartbreak. The beautiful London family home she had loved was sold in order for her mother to take an anti-Bourgeois position. The family moved to a house that reflected closer to the “ideal” socialist home otherwise on the low end of the economic scale. Her mother remained absent, busy with her film career and political causes. Natasha, unhappy and uncomfortable in their home, cooked and shopped for her mom and her sister. She attended the exclusive London private girls school, St. Paul’s, where her classmates called her mom an anti-Semite and “Commie.”
At 11, her dad moved to Los Angeles and became more open about his bisexual lifestyle. On her school holidays, Natasha visited her father in LA and became curious about the strange mix of people who stayed in her dad’s home. She was confused about her dad until her mom told her about his bisexuality. Full of pain, anger and sadness, Natasha turned to eating to comfort herself as a teenager. She became determined to channel her energy into acting. At 17, she enrolled at London’s Central School of Speech and Drama without revealing her family theatrical background. In 1984, she performed in her first play, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Her father issued his harsh verdict by telling his daughter her performance was “not good enough.” Two years later, she won the London Drama Critics Award for Most Promising Newcomer for her role of Nina in “The Seagull.”
At the age of four, Natasha had watched her dad direct her mom in the film, “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” She followed her dreams to go into the movies with work in the title role of “Patty Hearst” in 1988. In 1990, Richardson received a London Theatre Critics Award for her role in “Anna Christie.” She was cast in the film “The Handmaid’s Tale,” 1990 with “Nell” and “Widow’s Peak” both in 1994.
Richardson met her first husband, producer Robert Fox during the production of “The Seagull” in 1986. They were married in 1990 but soon began having marital problems. Her father died from AIDS in 1991. Richardson divorced Fox in 1992 and moved to New York to escape the heritage of her family’s theatrical history on the London stage. In 1992, she began a relationship with actor Liam Neeson. The couple married in 1994, three weeks after filming their movie, “Nell.” Her husband’s success in the Oscar-winning film, “Schindler’s List” relegated her to the new role as “Mrs. Neeson.” In 1995, she gave birth to Michael and Daniel followed closely in 1996. After the birth of her two sons, she took time off to raise her babies. She entered therapy after the birth of her children to examine her ideas about success, career and family. She and Neeson made their home in a midtown Manhattan apartment.
In 1998, she was able to bring a fresh new interpretation of the role of Sally Bowles in the Broadway revival of “Cabaret.”
On March 16, 2009 while skiing outside Montreal, Canada, she fell hit her head. About an hour after the accident, she began began experiencing headaches. She was hospitalized in Montreal but later was flown to a New York City hospital. There she died on March 18, 2009, age 49.
Link to Wikipedia biography