Natasha Richardson, Elegant, Pedigreed Actress, Dies (Update3)

March 19 (Bloomberg) -- Natasha Richardson, an actress of stage and screen who won a Tony Award in 1998 for her role in the Broadway musical “Cabaret,” died from injuries suffered in a ski accident. She was 45.

Richardson’s death was ruled an accident by New York City’s chief medical examiner. The cause of death was “epidural hematoma due to blunt impact to the head,” Grace Burgess, a spokeswoman for the office, said in a telephone interview today.

The actress was injured March 16 during a private ski lesson on a beginner’s slope at Quebec’s Mont Tremblant resort. Her death was announced late yesterday in an e-mailed statement from family spokesman Alan Nierob.

She initially laughed off her fall and said she was fine, said Catherine Lacasse, the public relations supervisor for the resort. She was hospitalized later that day after complaining of a headache, and was flown from Montreal to New York’s Lenox Hill Hospital, where she died yesterday.

Some people with blows to the head may appear uninjured for several hours, until pressure from the bleeding builds up inside the skull and damages the brain, said Alan Hirschfeld, chairman of the neurosurgery department at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan.

“That’s the most common explanation for what we call the lucid interval,” Hirschfeld said. “Sometimes the patient may be stunned or not even knocked out because the main energy of the blow is spread out when it fractures the skull.”

Theatrical Family

The British-born Richardson was the daughter of Oscar- winning actress Vanessa Redgrave and was married to the Irish actor Liam Neeson, who was at her bedside soon after the accident. The couple has two sons together.

“Liam Neeson, his sons, and the entire family are shocked and devastated by the tragic death of their beloved Natasha,” the family said in the statement.

Richardson’s films included “The Handmaid’s Tale” (1990) and “The Parent Trap” (1998).

In a 2005 television interview, Charlie Rose asked Richardson about a life that seemed to have it all.

“I wake up every day thinking how privileged and lucky I am,” she replied. “And also, when things are going well, I get really frightened.”

She said the sadness she had endured, including the death of her father and her husband’s near-fatal motorcycle collision with a deer in 2000, gave her an appreciation of pain “that goes into my work.”

Early Years

Natasha Jane Richardson was born on May 11, 1963, in London, the eldest of two daughters of Redgrave and director Tony Richardson. Her sister, Joely, also is an actress.

Redgrave and Tony Richardson divorced in 1967. Tony Richardson, who won an Academy Award for directing “Tom Jones” (1963), died in 1991 of complications from AIDS.

Natasha Richardson attended the St. Paul’s Girls’ School in London and trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama, then began acting in regional theater.

Her first movie appearance came as a child in “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (1968), which her father directed and in which her mother starred.

She played the title role in “Patty Hearst,” a 1988 film about the real-life kidnapped heiress. Other movies included “Maid in Manhattan” (2002) and “Asylum” (2005).

She appeared on Broadway in the title role of “Anna Christie” (1993), which introduced her and Neeson, her co-star.

‘Cabaret’ Role

In “Cabaret” she took on the role of Sally Bowles, the singing-and-dancing lead that Liza Minnelli played in the 1972 movie.

“The cool and elegant Ms. Richardson might at first seem an odd choice for Sally Bowles, the party girl who stays the same as the Nazis ascend and Germany changes around her,” the New York Times reported. “Ms. Richardson, after all, is an actress whose characters develop, and who radiates intelligence.”

Richardson told the Times that she conjured a somewhat different Sally for her revival: “I think there is a character journey she has. She goes from a ditzy girl with stars in her eyes, who just wants that life of glory and fun, to being somebody who becomes conscious of herself and her situation, and makes a choice knowing it will probably destroy her.”

Accepting her Tony Award for best actress in a musical, Richardson said, “This has been the most terrifying and the most thrilling journey of my life.”

She most recently appeared on Broadway in the 2005 revival of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” opposite John C. Reilly.

To contact the reporters on this story: Laurence Arnold in Washington at larnold4@bloomberg.net; Peter S. Green in New York at psgreen@bloomberg.net;