Natasha Richardson died after skiing accident

British actress Natasha Richardson has died two days after suffering brain damage in what was initially dismissed as a minor ski accident. She had a head injury and fell on a beginner's trail during a private ski lesson at the luxury Mont Tremblant ski resort in Quebec. About an hour late she complained that she didn't feel well.

She was flown by a private jet to New York Lenox Hill Hospital on Manhattan's Upper East Side and the family members have been seen arriving one after another. Her husband the Irish actor Liam Neeson and their sons Michael and Daniel were shocked by the tragedy. Richardson's mother, Vanessa Redgrave arrived in a car with darkened windows and was taken through a garage in the hospital. An hour earlier her sister, Joely ,arrived alone and entered through the back of the hospital.

Natasha's death was confirmed in a written statement by Alan Nierob, the Los Angeles-based publicist for her husband.

It was a sudden and horrifying loss for her family and friends, for the film and theater communities, for her many fans and for both her native and adoptive countries. Descended from at least three generations of actors, Richardson was a proper Londoner who came to love the noise of New York, an elegant blonde with large, lively eyes, a bright smile and a hearty laugh.

If she never quite attained the acting heights of her Academy Award-winning mother, she still had enjoyed a long and worthy career. As an actress, Richardson was equally adept at passion and restraint, able to portray besieged women both confessional (Tennessee Williams' Blanche DuBois) and confined (the concubine in the futuristic horror of "The Handmaid's Tale").

Like other family members, she divided her time between stage and screen. On Broadway, she won a Tony for her performance as Sally Bowles in a 1998 revival of "Cabaret." She also appeared in New York in a production of Patrick Marber's "Closer" (1999) as well as 2005 revival of Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire," in which she played Blanche opposite John C. Reilly's Stanley Kowalski.

She met Neeson when they made their Broadway debuts in 1993, co-starring in "Anna Christie," Eugene O'Neill's drama about a former prostitute and the sailor who falls in love with her.

Born in May 1963, Richardson was educated in London and trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama in the city, which has groomed a host of British actors.

Her extensive stage experience includes a number of Shakespearean roles, among them Ophelia in Hamlet and Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

The Redgrave clan is one of Britain's most famous stage and screen dynasties.
Vanessa, Corin and their sister Lynn are the children of Rachel Kempson and Michael Redgrave, who played in such British classics as the 1938 The Lady Vanishes and 1969 Goodbye, Mr Chips.

Natasha Richardson's sister Joely is also an actress, who is currently starring in the television drama Nip/Tuck.