Natasha Richardson, who has died suddenly, had great zest for life, and charm and wit in abundance. Michael Dwyerrecalls an actor who doubtless still had many fine performances to come

NATASHA Richardson’s untimely death this week at the age of 45 is, above all, a deep personal loss for her devoted husband Liam Neeson and their sons, 13-year-old Micheál and 12-year-old Daniel.

Having had the pleasure of meeting her several times, professionally and socially, I was struck by her sheer vivacity and zest for life, and the charm and wit she had in abundance.

Coming from one of the acting profession’s great dynasties, she was gifted with a truly distinctive talent and doubtless would have had many more fine performances to offer film and theatre lovers were it not for her tragic skiing accident in Montreal on Monday.

When we first met in 1998, Richardson had come to the end of her run in the spellbinding Broadway revival of Cabaretdirected by Sam Mendes, and her performance as Sally Bowles had brought her theatre's highest honour, the Tony award.

Her enthusiasm was infectious. Her eyes lit up as she recalled “nights when it hit such heights that, if it had been a film, you would just go ‘print that’. That’s as good as you can get. Some audiences just lift you like that and encourage you to greater heights.” Then she added modestly that she didn’t sing “anything like as well as Liza Minnelli” in the movie version of Cabaret.

Born in London on May 11th, 1963, she came from a line of celebrated actors that began with the marriage of acclaimed performers Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson and continued with their three offspring – Vanessa, Lynn and Corin Redgrave – and with the daughters of Vanessa and Oscar-winning film director Tony Richardson, Natasha and her younger sister, Joely Richardson, also an actor.

She trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama and made her professional debut at Leeds Playhouse before returning to London and roles in A Midsummer Night's Dream (as Helena) and Hamlet (as Ophelia). In 1986, she won the London Drama Critics Award as most promising newcomer for her performance in The Seagulland she joined her mother, Vanessa, and her aunt, Lynn, in another Chekhov play, Three Sisters.

Richardson's film career began in 1986 with Ken Russell's Gothic, in which she played Mary Shelley opposite Gabriel Byrne as Lord Byron. She gave two of her finest performances in films by Irish director Pat O'Connor – A Month in the Country(1987) with fellow emerging actors Kenneth Branagh and Colin Firth, and the 1993 TV film Zelda, in which she played Zelda Fitzgerald alongside Timothy Hutton as F Scott Fitzgerald.

Her outstanding film role was her most adventurous, playing the heiress who adopted the cause of her radical abductors in Patty Hearst(1988). It was directed by Paul Schrader, for whom she gave another memorable performance in his underrated 1990 film of Ian McEwan's novel The Comfort of Strangerswith Christopher Walken, Helen Mirren and Rupert Everett.

Her roles included two movies made in Ireland, the Hugh Leonard-scripted comedy Widow's Peak(1994) and the Patrick McGrath adaptation Asylum(2005), and she worked with Irish director Paddy Breathnach on Blow Dry(2001), scripted by Simon Beaufoy, the screenwriter of The Full Montyand Slumdog Millionaire.

"Certainly, there's been a great variety in what I've done," Richardson said when we first met, "and I've enjoyed it. But apart from Patty Hearst, there hasn't been anything in film that has stretched me in the way that playing Anna Christie or Sally Bowles did."

She and Liam Neeson first worked together in the 1993 Broadway revival of Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie, which earned Tony nominations for both actors. They married a year later, shortly before the release of their only film together, Nell, in which they co-starred with Jodie Foster.

In the summer of 1998, I met Neeson backstage after a Broadway performance of The Judas Kiss, in which he played Oscar Wilde. He spoke with great affection about Natasha and with warm pride for her achievement in winning a Tony award for Cabaret, in which she was performing at a theatre four blocks away.

He explained how, to maximise the free time they got to spend together and with their two young sons, they planned for their theatrical commitments in the two shows to end on the same day. Despite the urgings of impresarios and the evident public demand, she had arranged to make her exit from Cabareton the day that The Judas Kisscame to the end of its scheduled Broadway run.

So it seemed all the more incredible when, two months later, various British and Irish newspapers carried stories claiming that their marriage was over. As it happened, there was no substance in the allegations, as those newspapers were forced to admit in prominent retractions and apologies.

Richardson sighed at the memory of it all when we talked in London later that year. "It was appalling," she said, "not just for Liam and me, but also for our families and friends, who read about it before we even knew about it." Our 1998 interview coincided with the release of The Parent Trap, the Disney comedy in which Dennis Quaid and Richardson played a divorced couple, with Lindsay Lohan in the dual role of their twin daughters who scheme to bring their parents back together.

I asked Richardson if she related personally to the movie’s storyline, given that her own parents broke up when she was a young girl.

“Yes, there were resonances,” she said. “You know, when I was a child I believed that if I saved up my pocket money and sent roses around to my mother, pretending they were from my father, that they might get back together again. But then, when you’re a child, there are so many things you don’t understand about your parents.”

She continued with an anecdote involving her older son, Micheál, who was three at the time. "One day I took him to the Disney Store in New York and while we were looking around, a trailer for The Parent Trapcame up on the TV screens. Now Micheál is used to seeing Liam and me on the screen, so it's something he kind of takes for granted. 'There's momma,' he says. But then Dennis Quaid appeared on the screen and started hugging me. 'Who's that man?' Micheál asks. 'I don't like that man hugging momma.' And when we got home, he told Liam all about it."

Tributes

Many in the film and stage world and beyond have paid tribute to Natasha Richardson.

Lindsay Lohan, who co-starred with Richardson in the film The Parent Trap, said: "She was a wonderful woman and actress and treated me like I was her own. My heart goes out to her family. This is a tragic loss."

Sam Mendes, in whose 1998 Broadway production of CabaretRichardson starred as Sally Bowles, winning a Tony award, said: "Natasha combined the best of Redgrave and Richardson: the enormous depth and emotional force of a great actor on the one hand, and the intelligence and objectivity of a great director on the other. She was one of a kind, a magnificent actress."

SDLP MLA for North Antrim Declan O'Loan expressed his sympathy to the family. "I know that the people of Ballymena will join with me in this expression of sympathy. There is immense pride here in the achievements of Liam Neeson as an internationally known actor and one of great distinction. His large family circle here in Ballymena and the surrounding area are very well known and highly respected. We are all thinking of them."

Film-maker Ken Russell (81), who directed Richardson in her 1986 movie debut, Gothic, said she had a "blend of tenderness and fire".

Richardson, whose father director Tony died of Aids-related causes in 1991, was also on the board of the US-based charity amfAR, the Foundation for Aids Research. A spokeswoman for the charity said: "Our hearts go out to her family. This is a catastrophic loss for them, and it is a terrible loss for amfAR and the fight against Aids."

Gate Theatre director Michael Colgan recalled how supportive Richardson was last summer when Neeson was in Beckett's Eh Joein New York. He got to know her there through "those two boys, Liam, and her best friend, Ralph Fiennes".

"She gave her career to America and her children," he said, recalling some of her roles, including the film Handmaid's Tale, scripted by Harold Pinter from Margaret Atwood's novel, and her recent role as Blanche Dubois in New York with John C Reilly. "People have been gripped with terror," Colgan said, "by a mixture of the triviality of the accident, the seeming insignificance of the fall, and how young and vibrant she was." He had spoken to Fiennes, who has been with the family in New York, and who said he had never seen anything like the level of grief. Said Colgan: "I can't get her and them our of my head."